SCAPE 


SSAY 


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S^a  9   -Z   XX) 


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ESCAPE 

AND   OTHER  ESSAYS 


ESCAPE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 


BY 
ARTHUR  CHRISTOPHER  BENSON 


I  love  people  that  leave  some  traces  of  their  journey 
behind  them,  and  I  have  stren^h  enough  to  advise 
you  to  do  so  while  you  can.— Thomas  Gray. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1915 


J  >  *  >  J  • 


e6c 


Copyright,  1915,  by 
The  Century  Co. 


Published,  October,  1915 


TABI.E  OF  CONTENTS 

OHAPTEB  PAGE 

I  ESCAPE       3 

II  LITERATURE    AND   LIFE 25 

III  THE    NEW   POETS 47 

IV  WALT    WHITMAN 63 

V  CHARM 91 

VI  SUNSET 115- 

VII  THE    HOUSE    OF   PENGERSICK 129 

VIII  VILLAGES 139 

IX  DREAMS 153 

X  THE   VISITANT 175 

XI  THAT  OTHER  ONE 187 

XII  SCHOOLDAYS 201 

XIII  AUTHORSHIP 229 

XIV  HERB    MOLY   AND    HEARTSEASE 253 

XV  BEHOLD,    THIS   DREAMER   COMETH      .      .      .      .279 


M18S973 


NOTE 

I  desire  to  record  my  obligations  to  the  Editor 
of  the  Century  Magazine,  and  to  the  Editor  of  the 
ComhUl  Magazine,  for  their  permission  to  include 
in  this  volume  certain  essays  which  appeared  first 
in  their  pages. 

A.  C.  B. 


INTRODUCTION 


1  WALKED  to-day  down  by  the  riverside.  The 
Cam  is  a  stream  much  slighted  by  the  lover  of 
wild  and  romantic  scenery;  and  its  chief  merit,  in 
the  eyes  of  our  boys,  is  that  it  approaches  more 
nearly  to  a  canal  in  its  straightness  and  the  delib- 
eration of  its  slow  lapse  than  many  more  famous 
floods  —  and  is  therefore  more  adapted  for  the  ma- 
noeuvers  of  eight-oared  boats !  But  it  is  a  beauti- 
ful place,  I  am  sure;  and  my  ghost  will  certainly 
walk  there,  "  if  our  loves  remain,"  as  Browning 
says,  both  for  the  sake  of  old  memories  and  for  the 
love  of  its  own  sweet  peaceableness.  I  passed  out 
of  the  town,  out  of  the  straggling  suburbs,  away 
from  tall,  puffing  chimneys,  and  under  the  clanking 
railway  bridge;  and  then  at  once  the  scene  opens, 
wide  pasture-lands  on  either  side,  and  rows  of  old 
willows,  the  gnarled  trunks  holding  up  their  clus- 
tered rods.  There  on  the  other  side  of  the  stream 
rises  the  charming  village  of  Fen  Ditton,  perched 

vii 


Introduction 

on  a  low  ridge  near  the  water,  with  church  and 
vicarage  and  irregular  street,  and  the  little  red- 
gabled  Hall  looking  over  its  barns  and  stacks. 
More  and  more  willows,  and  then,  lying  back,  an 
old  grange,  called  Poplar  Hall,  among  high-stand- 
ing trees ;  and  then  a  little  weir,  where  the  falling 
water  makes  a  pleasant  sound,  and  a  black-timbered 
lock,  with  another  old  house  near  by,  a  secluded  re- 
treat for  the  bishops  of  Ely  in  medieval  times. 
The  bishop  came  thither  by  boat,  no  doubt,  and 
abode  there  for  a  few  quiet  weeks,  when  the  sun  lay 
hot  over  the  plain;  and  a  little  further  down  is  a 
tiny  village  called  Horningsea,  with  a  battlemented 
church  among  orchards  and  thatched  houses,  with 
its  own  disused  wharf  —  a  place  which  gives  me 
the  sense  of  a  bygone  age  as  much  as  any  hamlet 
I  know.  Then  presently  the  interminable  fen 
stretches  for  miles  and  miles  in  every  direction; 
you  can  see,  from  the  high  green  flood-banks  of 
the  river,  the  endless  lines  of  watercourses  and  far- 
ofF  clumps  of  trees  leagues  away,  and  perhaps  the 
great  tower  of  Ely,  blue  on  the  horizon,  with  the 
vast  spacious  sky  over-arching  all.  If  that  is  not 
a  beautiful  place  in  its  width,  its  greenness,  its 
unbroken  silence,  I  do  not  know  what  beauty  is! 
viii 


Introduction 

Nothing  that  historians  call  an  event  has  ever 
happened  there.  It  is  a  place  that  has  just  drifted 
out  of  the  old  lagoon  life  of  the  past,  the  life  of 
reed-beds  and  low-lying  islands,  of  marsh-fowl  and 
fishes,  into  a  hardly  less  peaceful  life  of  cornfield 
and  pasture.  No  one  goes  there  except  on  country 
business,  no  armies  ever  marshaled  or  fought  there. 
The  sun  goes  down  in  flame  on  the  far  horizon ;  the 
wild  duck  fly  over  and  settle  in  the  pools,  the 
flowers  rise  to  life  year  by  year  on  the  edges  of 
slow  water-courses ;  the  calm  mystery  of  it  can  be 
seen  and  remembered;  but  it  can  hardly  be  told 
in  words. 

Now  side  by  side  with  that  I  will  set  another 
picture  of  a  different  kind. 

A  week  or  two  ago  I  was  traveling  up  North. 
The  stations  we  passed  through  were  many  of  them 
full  of  troops,  the  trains  were  crammed  with  sol- 
diers, and  very  healthy  and  happy  they  looked.  I 
was  struck  by  their  friendliness  and  kindness ;  they 
were  civil  and  modest;  they  did  not  behave  as  if 
they  were  in  possession  of  the  line,  as  actually  I 
suppose  they  were,  but  as  if  they  were  ordinary 

ix 


Introduction 

travelers,  and  anxious  not  to  incommode  other  peo- 
ple. I  saw  soldiers  doing  kind  little  oflSces,  helping 
an  old  frail  woman  carefully  out  of  the  train  and 
handing  out  her  baggage,  giving  chocolates  to  chil- 
dren, interesting  themselves  in  their  fellow-travel- 
ers. At  one  place  I  saw  a  proud  and  anxious 
father,  himself  an  old  soldier,  I  think,  seeing  off  a 
jolly  young  subaltern  to  the  front,  with  hardly  sup- 
pressed tears  ;  the  young  man  was  full  of  excitement 
and  delight,  but  did  his  best  to  cheer  up  the  spirits 
of  "  Daddy,"  as  he  fondly  called  him.  I  felt  very 
proud  of  our  soldiers,  their  simplicity  and  kind- 
ness and  real  goodness.  I  was  glad  to  belong  to 
the  nation  which  had  bred  them,  and  half  forgot  the 
grim  business  on  which  they  were  bent.  We 
stopped  at  a  junction.  And  here  I  caught  sight  of 
a  strange  little  group.  There  was  a  young  man,  an 
officer,  who  had  evidently  been  wounded ;  one  of  his 
legs  was  incased  in  a  surgical  contrivance,  and  he 
had  a  bandage  round  his  head.  He  sat  on  a  bench 
between  two  stalwart  and  cheerful-looking  soldiers, 
who  had  their  arms  round  him,  and  were  each  hold- 
ing one  of  his  hands.  I  could  not  see  the  officer 
clearly  at  first,  as  a  third  soldier  was  standing  close 
in  front  of  him  and  speaking  encouragingly  to  him, 

X 


Introduction 

while  at  the  same  time  he  sheltered  him  from  the 
crowd.  But  he  moved  away,  and  at  the  same  mo- 
ment the  young  officer  lifted  his  head,  displaying  a 
drawn  and  sunken  face,  a  brow  compressed  with 
pain,  and  looked  wildly  and  in  a  terrified  way 
round  him,  with  large  melancholy  eyes.  Then  he 
began  to  beat  his  foot  on  the  ground,  and  strug- 
gled to  extricate  himself  from  his  companions ;  and 
then  he  buried  his  head  in  his  chest  and  sank  down 
in  an  attitude  of  angry  despair.  It  was  a  sight 
that  I  cannot  forget. 

Just  before  the  train  went  off,  an  officer  got  into 
my  carriage,  and  as  we  started,  said  to  me, 
"  That 's  a  sad  business  there  —  it  is  a  young 
officer  who  was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Germans  — 
one  of  our  best  men ;  he  escaped,  and  after  endur- 
ing awful  hardships  he  got  into  our  lines,  was 
wounded,  and  sent  home  to  hospital ;  but  the  shock 
and  the  anxiety  preyed  on  his  mind,  and  he  has 
become,  they  fear,  hopelessly  insane  —  he  is  being 
sent  to  a  sanatorium,  but  I  fear  there  is  very 
little  chance  of  his  recovery ;  he  is  wounded  in  the 
head  as  well  as  the  foot.  He  is  a  wealthy  man, 
devoted  to  soldiering,  and  he  is  just  engaged  to  a 
charming  girl.  ..." 

xi 


Introduction 


Now  there  is  a  hard  and  bitter  fact  of  life,  very 
different  from  the  story  of  the  fenland.  I  am  not 
going  to  argue  about  it  or  discuss  it,  because  to 
trace  the  threads  of  it  back  into  life  entangles  one 
at  once  helplessly  in  a  dreadful  series  of  problems : 
namely,  how  it  comes  to  pass  that  a  calamity, 
grievous  and  intolerable  beyond  all  calamities  in 
its  pain  and  sorrow  and  waste,  a  strife  abhorred 
and  dreaded  by  all  who  are  concerned  in  it,  fruitful 
in  every  shade  of  misery  and  wretchedness,  should 
yet  have  come  about  so  inevitably  and  relentlessly. 
No  one  claims  to  have  desired  war ;  all  alike  plead 
that  it  is  in  self-defense  that  they  are  fighting,  and 
maintain  that  they  have  labored  incessantly  for 
peace.  Yet  the  great  mills  of  fate  are  turning, 
and  grinding  out  death  and  shame  and  loss. 
Every  one  sickens  for  peace,  and  yet  any  proposal 
of  peace  is  drowned  in  cries  of  bitterness  and  rage. 
The  wisest  spend  their  time  in  pointing  out  the 
blessings  which  the  conflict  brings.  The  mother 
hears  that  the  son  she  parted  with  in  strength  and 
courage  is  moldering  in  an  unknown  grave,  and 
chokes  her  tears  down.  The  fruit  of  years  of 
labor   is   consumed,  lands   are   laid  desolate,  the 

xii 


Introduction 

weak  and  innocent  are  wronged ;  yet  the  great  war- 
engine  goes  thundering  and  smashing  on,  leaving 
hatred  and  horror  behind  it ;  and  all  the  while  men 
pray  to  a  God  of  mercy  and  loving-kindness  and 
entreat  His  blessing  on  the  work  they  are  doing. 

Is  there  then,  if  we  are  confronted  with  such 
problems  as  these,  anything  to  do  except  to  stay 
prostrate,  like  Job,  in  darkness  and  despair,  just 
enduring  the  stroke  of  sorrow?  Is  there  any 
excuse  for  bringing  before  the  world  at  such  a  time 
as  this,  the  delightful  reveries,  the  easy  happiness, 
the  gentle  schemes  of  serener  and  less  troubled 
days?  The  book  which  follows  was  the  work  of 
a  time  which  seems  divided  from  the  present  by  a 
dark  stream  of  unhappiness.  Is  it  right,  is  it 
decent,  to  unfold  an  old  picture  of  peace  before 
the  eyes  of  those  who  have  had  to  look  into  chaos 
and  destruction?  Would  it  not  be  braver  to  bum 
the  record  of  the  former  things  that  have  passed 
away? 

Yes,  I  believe  that  it  is  right  and  wholesome  to 
do  this,  because  the  most  treacherous  and  cowardly 
thing  we  can  do  is  to  disbelieve  in  life.     Those  old 
xiii 


Introduction 

dreams  and  visions  were  true  enough,  and  they  will 
be  true  again.  They  represent  the  real  life  to 
which  we  must  try  to  return.  We  must  try  to 
build  up  the  conception  afresh,  not  feebly  to  con- 
fess that  we  were  all  astray.  We  cannot  abolish 
evil  by  confessing  ourselves  worsted  by  it ;  we  can 
only  overcome  it  by  holding  fast  to  our  belief  in 
labor  and  order  and  peace.  It  is  a  temptation 
which  we  must  resist,  to  philosophize  too  much 
about  war.  Very  few  minds  are  large  enough  and 
clear  enough  to  hold  all  the  problems  in  their 
grasp.  I  do  not  believe  for  an  instant  that  war 
has  falsified  our  vision  of  peace.  We  must  cling 
to  it  more  than  ever,  we  must  emphasize  it,  we  must 
dwell  in  it.  I  regard  war  as  I  regard  an  outbreak 
of  pestilence;  the  best  way  to  resist  it  is  not  to 
brood  over  it,  but  to  practise  joy  and  health.  The 
ancient  plagues  which  devastated  Europe  have  not 
been  overcome  by  philosophy,  but  by  the  upspring- 
ing  desire  of  men  to  live  cleaner  and  more  whole- 
some lives.  That  instinct  is  not  created  by  any 
philosophy  or  persuasion;  it  just  arises  everywhere 
and  finds  its  way  to  the  light. 

To  brood  over  the  war,  to  spend  our  time  in 
disentangling  its  intricate  causes,  seems  to  me  a 
xiv 


Introduction 

task  for  future  historians.  But  a  lover  of  peace, 
confronted  by  the  hideousness  of  war,  does  best  to 
try,  if  he  can,  to  make  plain  what  he  means  by 
peace  and  why  he  desires  it.  I  do  not  mean  by 
peace  an  indolent  life,  lost  in  gentle  reveries.  I 
mean  hard  daily  work,  and  mutual  understanding, 
and  lavish  help,  and  the  effort  to  reassure  and 
console  and  uplift.  And  I  mean,  too,  a  real  con- 
flict—  not  a  conflict  where  we  set  the  best  and 
bravest  of  each  nation  to  spill  each  other's  blood  — 
but  a  conflict  against  crime  and  disease  and  selfish- 
ness and  greediness  and  cruelty.  There  is  much 
fighting  to  be  done;  can  we  not  combine  to  fight 
our  common  foes,  instead  of  weakening  each  other 
against  evil?  We  destroy  in  war  our  finest 
parental  stock,  we  waste  our  labor,  we  lose  our 
garnered  store;  we  give  every  harsh  passion  a 
chance  to  grow. 

6 

And  yet  there  is  one  thing  in  the  present  war 
which  I  do  in  my  heart  of  hearts  feel  to  be  worth 
fighting  for,  and  that  is  for  the  hope  of  liberty. 
It  is  hard  to  say  what  liberty  is,  because  the 
essence  of  it  is  the  subjugation  of  personal  inclina- 

XV 


Introduction 

tions.  The  Germans  claim  that  they  alone  know 
the  meaning  of  liberty,  and  that  they  have  arrived 
at  it  by  discipline.  But  the  bitterness  of  this  war 
lies  in  the  fact  that  the  Germans  are  not  content 
to  set  an  example  of  attractive  virtue,  and  to  leave 
the  world  to  choose  it ;  but  that  if  the  world  will 
not  choose  it,  they  will  force  it  upon  them  by 
violence  and  the  sword.  It  is  this  which  makes  me 
feel  that  the  war  may  be  a  vast  protest  of  the  na- 
tions, which  have  the  spirit  of  the  future  in  their 
hearts,  against  a  theory  of  life  that  represents  the 
spirit  of  the  past.  And  I  thus,  with  some  seeming 
inconsistency,  believe  that  the  war  may  represent 
the  hope  of  peace  at  bay.  If  the  nations  can  keep 
this  clearly  before  them,  and  not  be  tempted  either 
into  reprisals,  or  into  rewarding  themselves  by  the 
spoils  of  victory,  if  victory  comes ;  if  it  ends  in  the 
Germans  being  sincerely  convinced  that  they  have 
been  misled  and  poisoned  by  a  conception  of  right 
which  is  both  uncivilized  and  unchristian,  then  I 
believe  that  all  our  sufferings  may  not  be  too  great 
a  price  to  pay  for  the  future  well-being  of  the 
world.  That  is  the  largest  and  brightest  hope  I 
dare  to  frame ;  and  there  are  many  hours  and  days 
when  it  seems  all  clouded  and  dim. 
xvi 


Introduction 
6 

We  cannot  at  this  time  disengage  our  thoughts 
from  the  war ;  we  cannot  and  we  ought  not.  Still 
less  can  we  take  refuge  from  it  in  idle  dreams  of 
peace  and  security ;  but  at  a  time  when  every  paper 
and  book  that  we  see  is  full  of  the  war  and  its  suf- 
ferings, there  must  be  men  and  women  who  would  do 
well  to  turn  their  hearts  and  minds  for  a  little  away 
from  it.  If  we  brood  over  it,  if  we  feed  our  minds 
upon  it,  especially  if  we  are  by  necessity  noncom- 
batants,  it  is  all  apt  to  turn  to  a  festering  horror 
which  makes  us  useless  and  miserable.  Whatever 
happens,  we  must  try  not  to  be  simply  the  worse 
for  the  war,  morbid,  hysterical,  beggared  of  faith 
and  hope,  horrified  with  life.  That  is  the  worst  of 
evils ;  and  I  believe  that  it  is  wholesome  to  put  as 
far  as  we  can  our  cramped  minds  in  easier  postures, 
and  to  let  our  spirits  have  a  wider  range.  We 
know  how  a  dog  who  is  perpetually  chained  be- 
comes fierce  and  furious,  and  thinks  of  nothing  but 
imaginary  foes,  so  that  the  most  peaceful  passer-by 
becomes  an  enemy.  I  have  felt,  since  the  war 
began,  a  certain  poison  in  the  air,  a  tendency 
towards  suspicion  and  contentiousness  and  vague 
hostility.  We  must  exorcise  that  evil  spirit  if  we 
xvii 


Introduction 

can;  and  I  believe  it  is  best  laid  by  letting  our 
minds  go  back  to  the  old  peace  for  a  little,  and  re- 
solving that  the  new  peace  which  we  believe  is 
coming  shall  be  of  a  larger  and  nobler  quality ;  we 
may  thus  come  to  appreciate  the  happiness  which 
we  enjoyed  but  had  not  earned;  and  lay  our  plans 
for  earning  a  new  kind  of  happiness,  the  essence  of 
which  shall  be  a  mutual  trust,  that  desires  to  give 
and  share  whatever  it  enjoys,  instead  of  hoarding 
it  and  guarding  it. 

A  wise  and  unselfish  woman  wrote  to  me  the  other 
day  in  words  which  will  long  live  in  my  mind ;  she 
had  sent  out  one  whom  she  dearly  loved  to  the 
front,  and  she  was  fighting  her  fears  as  gallantly 
as  she  could.  "  Whatever  happens  we  must  not 
give  way  to  dread,"  she  wrote.  "  It  does  not  do  to 
dread  anything  for  our  own  treasures." 

That  is  the  secret!  What  we  must  not  do,  in 
the  time  of  war,  is  to  indicate  to  every  one  else 
what  their  sacrifices  ought  to  be;  we  must  just 
make  our  own  sacrifices ;  and  perhaps  the  man  who 
loves  and  values  peace  most  highly  does  not  sacri- 
fice the  least.  But  even  he  may  try  to  realize  that 
life  does  not  contradict  itself ;  but  that  the  parts  of 
it,  whether  they  be  delightful  or  dreadful,  do  work 
into  each  other  in  a  marvelous  way. 
xviii 


ESCAPE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
ESCAPE 


ESCAPE 

AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 
I 

ESCAPE 

ALL  the  best  stories  in  the  world  are  but  one 
story  in  reality  —  the  story  of  an  escape. 
It  is  the  only  thing  which  interests  us  all  and  at 
all  times  —  how  to  escape.  The  stories  of  Joseph, 
of  Odysseus,  of  the  prodigal  son,  of  the  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress,"  of  the  "  Ugly  Duckling,"  of  Sintram, 
to  name  only  a  few  out  of  a  great  number,  they  are 
all  stories  of  escapes.  It  is  the  same  with  all  love- 
stories.  "  The  course  of  true  love  never  can  run 
smooth,"  says  the  old  proverb,  and  love-stories 
are  but  tales  of  a  man  or  a  woman's  escape  from 
the  desert  of  lovelessness  into  the  citadel  of  love. 
Even  tragedies  like  those  of  "  (Edipus "  and 
"  Hamlet "  have  the  same  thought  in  the  back- 
ground.    In  the  tale  of  CEdipus,  the  old  blind  king 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

in  his  tattered  robe,  who  had  committed  in  igno- 
rance such  nameless  crimes,  leaves  his  two  daugh- 
ters and  the  attendants  standing  between  the  old 
pear-tree  and  the  marble  tomb  by  the  sacred 
fountain;  he  says  the  last  faint  words  of  love, 
till  the  voice  of  the  god  comes  thrilling  upon  the 
air: 

"  CEdipus,  why  delayest  thou  ?  " 

Then  he  walks  away  at  once  in  silence,  leaning 
on  the  arm  of  Theseus,  and  when  at  last  the  watch- 
ers dare  to  look,  they  see  Theseus  afar  off,  alone, 
screening  his  eyes  with  his  hand,  as  if  some  sight 
too  dreadful  for  mortal  eyes  had  passed  before  him ; 
but  CEdipus  is  gone,  and  not  with  lamentation,  but 
in  hope  and  wonder.  Even  when  Hamlet  dies,  and 
the  peal  of  ordnance  is  shot  off,  it  is  to  congratu- 
late him  upon  his  escape  from  unbearable  woe ;  and 
that  is  the  same  in  life.  If  our  eye  falls  on  the 
sad  stories  of  men  and  women  who  have  died  by 
their  own  hand,  how  seldom  do  they  speak  in  the 
scrawled  messages  they  leave  behind  them  as 
though  they  were  going  to  silence  and  nothingness  ! 
It  is  just  the  other  way.  The  unhappy  fathers  and 
mothers  who,  maddened  by  disaster,  kill  their  chil- 
dren are  hoping  to  escape  with  those  they  love  best 

4 


Escape 

out  of  miseries  they  cannot  bear;  they  mean  to  fly 
together,  as  Lot  fled  with  his  daughters  from  the 
city  of  the  plain.  The  man  who  slays  himself  is 
not  the  man  who  hates  life;  he  only  hates  the  sor- 
row and  the  shame  which  make  unbearable  that 
life  which  he  loves  only  too  well.  He  is  trying  to 
migrate  to  other  conditions ;  he  desires  to  live,  but 
he  cannot  live  so.  It  is  the  imagination  of  man 
that  makes  him  seek  death;  only  the  animal  en- 
dures, but  man  hurries  away  in  the  hope  of  finding 
something  better. 

It  is,  however,  strange  to  reflect  how  weak  man's 
imagination  is  when  it  comes  to  deal  with  what  is 
beyond  him,  how  little  able  he  is  to  devise  anything 
that  he  desires  to  do  when  he  has  escaped  from  life. 
The  unsubstantial  heaven  of  a  Buddhist,  with  its 
unthinkable  Nirvana,  is  merely  the  depriving  life 
of  all  its  attributes;  the  dull  sensuality  of  the 
Mahometan  paradise,  with  its  ugly  multiplication 
of  gross  delights ;  the  tedious  outcries  of  the  saints 
in  light  which  make  the  medieval  scheme  of  heaven 
into  one  protracted  canticle  —  these  are  all  deeply 
unattractive,  and  have  no  power  at  all  over  the 
vigorous  spirit.  Even  the  vision  of  Socrates,  the 
hope  of  unrestricted  converse  with  great  minds,  is 

6 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

a  very  unsatisfying  thought,  because  it  yields  so 
little  material  to  work  upon. 

The  fact,  of  course,  is  that  it  is  just  the  va- 
riety of  experience  which  makes  life  interesting, — 
toil  and  rest,  pain  and  relief,  hope  and  satisfac- 
tion, danger  and  security, —  and  if  we  once  re- 
move the  idea  of  vicissitude  from  life,  it  all  be- 
comes an  indolent  and  uninspiring  affair.  It  is 
the  process  of  change  which  is  delightful,  the  find- 
ing out  what  we  can  do  and  what  we  cannot,  going 
from  ignorance  to  knowledge,  from  clumsiness  to 
skill;  even  our  relations  with  those  whom  we  love 
are  all  bound  up  with  the  discoveries  we  make 
about  them  and  the  degree  in  which  we  can  help 
them  and  affect  them.  What  the  mind  instinc- 
tively dislikes  is  stationariness ;  and  an  existence 
in  which  there  was  nothing  to  escape  from,  nothing 
more  to  hope  for,  to  learn,  to  desire,  would  be 
frankly  unendurable. 

The  reason  why  we  dread  death  is  because  it 
seems  to  be  a  suspension  of  all  our  familiar  activi- 
ties. It  would  be  terrible  to  have  nothing  but 
memory  to  depend  upon.  The  only  use  of  mem- 
ory is  that  it  distracts  us  a  little  from  present 
conditions  if  they  are  dull,  and  it  is  only  too  true 

6 


Escape 

that  the  recollection  in  sorrow  of  happy  things  is 
torture  of  the  worst  kind. 

Once  when  Tennyson  was  suffering  from  a  dan- 
gerous illness,  his  friend  Jowett  wrote  to  Lady 
Tennyson  to  suggest  that  the  poet  might  find  com- 
fort in  thinking  of  all  the  good  he  had  done.  But 
that  is  not  the  kind  of  comfort  that  a  sufferer 
desires;  we  may  envy  a  good  man  his  retrospect 
of  activity,  but  we  cannot  really  suppose  that  to 
meditate  complacently  upon  what  one  has  been 
enabled  to  do  is  the  final  thought  that  a  good  man 
is  likely  to  indulge.  He  is  far  more  likely  to 
torment  himself  over  all  that  he  might  have  done. 

It  is  true,  I  think,  that  old  and  tired  people 
pass  into  a  quiet  serenity;  but  it  is  the  serenity 
of  the  old  dog  who  sleeps  in  the  sun,  wags  his  tail 
if  he  is  invited  to  bestir  himself,  but  does  not  leave 
his  place;  and  if  one  reaches  that  condition,  it  is 
but  a  dumb  gratitude  at  the  thought  that  nothing 
more  is  expected  of  the  worn-out  frame  and  fa- 
tigued mind.  But  no  one,  I  should  imagine,  really 
hopes  to  step  into  immortality  so  tired  and  worn 
out  that  the  highest  hope  that  he  can  frame  is 
that  he  will  be  let  alone  forever.  We  must  not 
trust  the  drowsiness  of  the  outworn  spirit  to  frame 

7 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  real  hopes  of  humanity.  If  we  believe  that 
the  next  experience  ahead  of  us  is  like  that  of  the 
mariners, 

In  the  afternoon  they  came  unto  a  land 
In  which  it  seemed  always  afternoon, 

then  we  acquiesce  in  a  dreamless  sort  of  sleep  as 
the  best  hope  of  man. 

No,  we  must  rather  trust  the  desires  of  the 
spirit  at  its  healthiest  and  most  vigorous,  and 
these  are  all  knit  up  with  the  adventure  of  escape, 
as  I  have  said.  There  is  something  hostile  on  our 
track:  the  copse  that  closes  in  upon  the  road  is 
thick  with  spears ;  presences  that  do  not  wish  us 
well  move  darkly  in  the  wood  and  keep  pace  with 
us,  and  the  only  explanation  we  can  give  is  that 
we  need  to  be  spurred  on  by  fear  if  we  are  not 
drawn  forward  by  desire  or  hope.  We  have  to 
keep  moving,  and  if  we  will  not  run  to  the  goal, 
we  must  at  least  flee,  with  backward  glances  at 
something  which  threatens  us. 

There  is  an  old  and  strange  Eastern  allegory 
of  a  man  wandering  in  the  desert;  he  draws  near 
to  a  grove  of  trees,  when  he  suddenly  becomes 
aware  that  there  is  a  lion  on  his  track,  hurrying 

8 


Escape 

and  bounding  along  on  the  scent  of  his  steps. 
The  man  flees  for  safety  into  the  grove;  he  sees 
there  a  roughly  built  water-tank  of  stone,  exca- 
vated in  the  ground,  and  built  up  of  masonry  much 
fringed  with  plants.  He  climbs  swiftly  down  to 
where  he  sees  a  ledge  close  on  the  water;  as  he 
does  this,  he  sees  that  in  the  water  lies  a  great  liz- 
ard, with  open  jaws,  watching  him  with  wicked 
eyes.  He  stops  short,  and  he  can  just  support 
himself  among  the  stones  by  holding  on  to  the 
branches  of  a  plant  which  grows  from  a  ledge 
above  him.  While  he  thus  holds  on,  with  death 
behind  him  and  before,  he  feels  the  branches  quiv- 
ering, and  sees  above,  out  of  reach,  two  mice,  one 
black  and  one  white,  which  are  nibbling  at  the 
stems  he  holds  and  will  soon  sever  them.  He  waits 
despairingly,  and  while  he  does  so,  he  sees  that 
there  are  drops  of  honey  on  the  leaves  which  he 
holds ;  he  puts  his  lips  to  them,  licks  them  off,  and 
finds  them  very  sweet. 

The  mice  stand,  no  doubt,  for  night  and  day, 
and  the  honey  is  the  sweetness  of  life,  which  it  is 
possible  to  taste  and  relish  even  when  death  is  be- 
fore and  behind;  and  it  is  true  that  the  utter 
precariousness  of  life  does  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 

9 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

distract  us  from  the  pleasure  of  it,  even  though 
the  strands  to  which  we  hold  are  slowly  parting. 
It  is  all,  then,  an  adventure  and  an  escape;  but 
even  in  the  worst  insecurity,  we  may  often  be  sur- 
prised to  find  that  it  is  somehow  sweet. 

It  is  not  in  the  least  a  question  of  the  apparent 
and  outward  adventurousness  of  one's  life.  Fool- 
ish people  sometimes  write  and  think  as  though 
one  could  not  have  had  adventures  unless  one  has 
hung  about  at  bar-room  doors  and  in  billiard- 
saloons,  worked  one's  passage  before  the  mast  in 
a  sailing-ship,  dug  for  gold  among  the  mountains, 
explored  savage  lands,  shot  strange  animals,  fared 
hardly  among  deep-drinking  and  loud-swearing 
men.  It  is  possible,  of  course,  to  have  adventures 
of  this  kind,  and,  indeed,  I  had  a  near  relative 
whose  life  was  fuller  of  vicissitudes  than  any  life 
I  have  ever  known :  he  was  a  sailor,  a  clerk,  a  po- 
liceman, a  soldier,  a  clergyman,  a  farmer,  a  verger. 
But  the  mere  unsettledness  of  it  suited  him:  he 
was  an  easy  comrade,  brave,  reckless,  restless ; 
he  did  not  mind  roughness,  and  the  one  thing  he 
could  not  do  was  to  settle  down  to  anything  regu- 
lar and  quiet.  He  did  not  dislike  life  at  all,  even 
when  he  stood  half-naked,  as  he  once  told  me  he 

10 


Escape 

did,  on  a  board  slung  from  the  side  of  a  ship,  and 
dipped  up  pails  of  water  to  swab  it,  the  water 
freezing  as  he  flung  it  on  the  timbers.  But  with 
all  this  variety  of  life  he  did  not  learn  anything 
particular  from  it  all;  he  was  much  the  same  al- 
ways, good  natured,  talkative,  childishly  absorbed, 
not  looking  backward  or  forward,  and  fondest  of 
telling  stories  with  sailors  in  an  inn.  He  learned 
to  be  content  in  most  companies  and  to  fare 
roughly ;  but  he  gained  neither  wisdom  nor  humor, 
and  he  was  not  either  happy  or  independent, 
though  he  despised  with  all  his  heart  the  stay-at- 
home,  stick-in-the-mud  life. 

But  we  are  not  all  made  like  this,  and  it  is  only 
possible  for  a  few  people  to  live  so  by  the  fact 
that  most  people  prefer  to  stay  at  home  and  do 
the  work  of  the  world.  My  cousin  was  not  a 
worker,  and,  indeed,  did  no  work  except  under  com- 
pulsion and  in  order  to  live ;  but  such  people  seem  to 
belong  to  an  older  order,  and  are  more  like  children 
playing  about,  and  at  leisure  to  play  because  oth- 
ers work  to  feed  and  clothe  them.  The  world 
would  be  a  wretched  and  miserable  place  if  all  tried 
to  live  life  on  those  lines. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  me  to  live  so,  though  I 
11 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

dare  say  I  should  be  a  better  man  if  I  had  had  a 
little  more  hardship  of  that  kind;  but  I  have 
worked  hard  in  my  own  way,  and  though  I  have 
had  few  hairbreadth  escapes,  yet  I  have  had  sharp 
troubles  and  slow  anxieties.  I  have  been  like  the 
man  in  the  story,  between  the  lion  and  the  lizard 
for  many  months  together ;  and  I  have  had  more  to 
bear,  by  temperament  and  fortune,  than  my  rov- 
ing cousin  ever  had  to  endure;  so  that  because  a 
life  seems  both  sheltered  and  prosperous,  it  need 
not  therefore  have  been  without  its  adventures  and 
escapes  and  its  haunting  fears. 

The  more  one  examines  into  life  and  the  motives 
of  it,  the  more  does  one  perceive  that  the  imagina- 
tion, concerning  itself  with  hopes  of  escape  from 
any  conditions  which  hamper  and  confine  us,  is 
the  dynamic  force  that  is  transmuting  the  world. 
The  child  is  forever  planning  what  it  will  do  when 
it  is  older,  and  dreams  of  an  irresponsible  choice 
of  food  and  an  unrestrained  use  of  money ;  the  girl 
schemes  to  escape  from  the  constraints  of  home  by 
independence  or  marriage;  the  professional  man 
plans  to  make  a  fortune  and  retire;  the  mother 
dreams  ambitious  dreams  for  her  children;  the 
politician  craves  for  power;  the  writer  hopes  to 

12 


Escape 

gain  the  ear  of  the  world  —  these  are  only  a  few 
casual  instances  of  the  desire  that  is  always  at 
work  within  us,  projecting  us  into  a  larger  and 
freer  future  out  of  the  limited  and  restricted  pres- 
ent. That  is  the  real  current  of  the  world,  and 
though  there  are  sedate  people  who  are  contented 
with  life  as  they  see  it,  yet  in  most  minds  there  is 
a  fluttering  of  little  tremulous  hopes  forecasting 
ease  and  freedom;  and  there  are  also  many  tired 
and  dispirited  people  who  are  not  content  with  life 
as  they  have  it,  but  acquiesce  in  its  dreariness ; 
yet  all  who  have  any  part  in  the  world's  develop- 
ment are  full  of  schemes  for  themselves  and  others 
by  which  the  clogging  and  detaining  elements  are 
somehow  to  be  improved  away.  Sensitive  people 
want  to  find  life  more  harmonious  and  beautiful, 
healthy  people  desire  a  more  continuous  sort  of 
holiday  than  they  can  attain,  religious  people  long 
for  a  secret  ecstasy  of  peace;  there  is,  in  fact,  a 
constant  desire  at  work  to  realize  perfection. 

And  yet,  despite  it  all,  there  is  a  vast  prepon- 
derance of  evidence  which  shows  us  that  the  at- 
tainment of  our  little  dreams  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
desired,  and  that  satisfied  desire  is  the  least  con- 
tented of  moods.  If  we  realize  our  program,  if  we 
13 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

succeed,  marry  the  woman  we  love,  make  a  fortune, 
win  leisure,  gain  power,  a  whole  host  of  further 
desires  instantly  come  in  sight.  I  once  congratu- 
lated a  statesman  on  a  triumphant  speech. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  do  not  deny  that  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  have  had  for  once  the  exact  effect  that 
one  intended  to  have;  but  the  shadow  of  it  is  the 
fear  that  having  once  reached  that  standard,  one 
may  not  be  able  to  keep  it  up." 

The  awful  penalty  of  success  is  the  haunting 
dread  of  subsequent  failure,  and  even  sadder  still 
is  the  fact  that  in  striving  eagerly  to  attain  an 
end,  we  are  apt  to  lose  the  sense  of  the  purpose 
which  inspired  us.  This  is  more  drearily  true  of 
the  pursuit  of  money  than  of  anything  else.  I 
could  name  several  friends  of  my  own  who  started 
in  business  with  the  perfectly  definite  and  avowed 
intention  of  making  a  competence  in  order  that 
they  might  live  as  they  desired  to  live;  that  they 
might  travel,  read,  write,  enjoy  a  secure  leisure. 
But  when  they  had  done  exactly  what  they  meant 
to  do,  the  desires  were  all  atrophied.  They  could 
not  give  up  their  work ;  they  felt  it  would  be  safer 
to  have  a  larger  margin,  they  feared  they  might  be 
bored,  they  had  made  friends,  and  did  not  wish  to 

14t 


Escape 

sever  the  connection,  they  must  provide  a  little 
more  for  their  families :  the  whole  program  had  in- 
sensibly altered.  Even  so  they  were  still  planning 
to  escape  from  something  —  from  some  boredom 
or  anxiety  or  dread. 

And  yet  it  seems  very  difficult  for  any  person 
to  realize  what  is  the  philosophical  conclusion, 
namely,  that  the  work  of  each  of  us  matters  very 
little  to  the  world,  but  that  it  matters  very  much 
to  ourselves  that  we  should  have  some  work  to  do. 
We  seem  to  be  a  very  feeble-minded  race  in  this 
respect,  that  we  require  to  be  constantly  bribed 
and  tempted  by  illusions.  I  have  known  men  of 
force  and  vigor  both  in  youth  and  middle  life  who 
had  a  strong  sense  of  the  value  and  significance  of 
their  work;  as  age  came  upon  them,  the  value  of 
their  work  gradually  disappeared;  they  were  de- 
ferred to,  consulted,  outwardly  reverenced,  and 
perhaps  all  the  more  scrupulously  and  compassion- 
ately in  order  that  they  might  not  guess  the  la- 
mentable fact  that  their  work  was  done  and  that 
the  forces  and  influences  were  in  younger  hands. 
But  the  men  themselves  never  lost  the  sense  of  their 
importance.  I  knew  an  octogenarian  clergyman 
who  declared  once  in  my  presence  that  it  was  ridic- 

15 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

nlous  to  say  that  old  men  lost  their  faculty  of  deal- 
ing with  affairs. 

"  Why,"  he  said,  "  it  is  only  quite  in  the  last 
few  years  that  I  feel  I  have  really  mastered  my 
work.  It  takes  me  far  less  time  than  it  used  to 
do;  it  is  just  promptly  and  methodically  exe- 
cuted." The  old  man  obviously  did  not  know  that 
his  impression  that  his  work  consumed  less  time 
was  only  too  correct,  because  it  was,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  almost  wholly  performed  by  his  colleagues, 
and  nothing  was  referred  to  him  except  purely  for- 
mal business. 

It  seems  rather  pitiful  that  we  should  not  be 
able  to  face  the  truth,  and  that  we  cannot  be  con- 
tent with  discerning  the  principle  of  it  all,  which  is 
that  our  work  is  given  to  us  to  do  not  for  its  in- 
trinsic value,  but  because  it  is  good  for  us  to  do  it. 

The  secret  government  of  the  world  seems,  in- 
deed, to  be  penetrated  by  a  good-natured  irony; 
it  is  as  if  the  Power  controlling  us  saw  that,  like 
children,  we  must  be  tenderly  wooed  into  doing 
things  which  we  should  otherwise  neglect,  by  a  sense 
of  high  importance,  as  a  kindly  father  who  is  doing 
accounts  keeps  his  children  quiet  by  letting  one 
hold  the  blotting-paper  and  another  the  ink,  so 

16 


Escape 

that  they  believe  that  they  are  helping  when  they 
are  merely  being  kept  from  hindering. 

And  this  strange  sense  of  escape  which  drives  us 
into  activity  and  energy  seems  given  us  not  that 
we  may  realize  our  aims,  which  turn  out  hollow  and 
vapid  enough  when  they  are  realized,  but  that  we 
may  drink  deep  of  experience  for  the  sake  of  its 
beneficent  effect  upon  us.  The  failure  of  almost 
all  Utopias  and  ideal  states,  designed  and  planned 
by  writers  and  artists,  lies  in  the  absence  of  all 
power  to  suggest  how  the  happy  folk  who  have 
conquered  all  the  ills  and  difficulties  of  life  are  to 
employ  themselves  reasonably  and  eagerly  when 
there  is  nothing  left  to  improve.  William  Mor- 
ris, indeed,  in  his  "  News  from  Nowhere,"  confessed 
through  the  mouth  of  one  of  his  characters  that 
there  would  be  hardly  enough  pleasant  work,  like 
hay-making  and  bridge-building  and  carpentering 
and  paving,  left  to  go  round ;  and  the  picture  of  life 
which  he  draws,  with  its  total  lack  of  privacy,  the 
shops  where  you  may  ask  for  anything  that  you 
want  without  having  to  pay,  the  guest-houses,  with 
their  straw-colored  wine  in  quaint  carafes,  the 
rich  stews  served  in  gray  earthenware  dishes 
streaked  with  blue,  the  dancing,  the  caressing,  the 
17 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

singular  absence  of  all  elderly  women,  strikes  on 
the  mind  with  a  quite  peculiar  sense  of  boredom 
and  vacuity,  because  Morris  seems  to  have  elimi- 
nated so  many  sources  of  human  interest,  and  to 
have  conformed  every  one  to  a  type,  which  is  re- 
freshing enough  as  a  contrast,  but  very  tiresome  in 
the  mass.  It  will  not  be  enough  to  have  got  rid  of 
the  combative  and  sordid  and  vulgar  elements  of 
the  world  unless  a  very  active  spirit  of  some  kind 
has  taken  its  place.  Morris  himself  intended  that 
art  should  supply  the  missing  force ;  but  art  is  not 
a  sociable  thing ;  it  is  apt  to  be  a  lonely  affair,  and 
few  artists  have  either  leisure  or  inclination  to  ad- 
mire one  another's  work. 

Still  more  dreary  was  the  dream  of  the  philoso- 
pher J.  S.  Mill,  who  was  asked  upon  one  occasion 
what  would  be  left  for  men  to  do  when  they  had 
been  perfected  on  the  lines  which  he  desired.  He 
replied,  after  a  long  and  painful  hesitation,  that 
they  might  find  satisfaction  in  reading  the  poems 
of  Wordsworth.  But  Wordsworth's  poems  are 
useful  in  the  fact  that  they  supply  a  refreshing 
contrast  to  the  normal  thought  of  the  world,  and 
nothing  but  the  fact  that  many  took  a  different 
view  of  life  was  potent  enough  to  produce  them. 

18 


Escape 

So,  for  the  present  at  all  events,  we  must  be  con- 
tent to  feel  that  our  imagination  provides  us  with 
a  motive  rather  than  with  a  goal ;  and  though  it  is 
very  important  that  we  should  strive  with  all  our 
might  to  eliminate  the  baser  elements  of  life,  yet 
we  must  be  brave  and  wise  enough  to  confess  how 
much  of  our  best  happiness  is  born  of  the  fact 
that  we  have  these  elements  to  contend  with. 

Edward  FitzGerald  once  said  that  a  fault  of 
modern  writing  was  that  it  tried  to  compress  too 
many  good  things  into  a  page,  and  aimed  too  much 
at  omitting  the  homelier  interspaces.  We  must 
not  try  to  make  our  lives  into  a  perpetual  feast; 
at  least  we  must  try  to  do  so,  but  it  must  be  by 
conquest  rather  than  by  inglorious  flight ;  we  must 
face  the  fact  that  the  stuff  of  life  is  both  homely 
and  indeed  amiss,  and  realize,  if  we  can,  that  our 
happiness  is  bound  up  with  energetically  trying 
to  escape  from  conditions  which  we  cannot  avoid. 
When  we  are  young  and  fiery-hearted,  we  think 
that  a  tame  counsel;  but,  like  all  great  truths,  it 
dawns  on  us  slowly.  Not  until  we  begin  to  ascend 
the  hill  do  we  grasp  how  huge,  how  complicated, 
how  intricate  the  plain,  with  all  its  fields,  woods, 
hamlets,  and  streams  is;  we  are  happy  men  and 

19 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

women  if  in  middle  age  we  even  faintly  grasp  that 
the  actual  truth  about  life  is  vastly  larger  and 
finer  than  any  impatient  youthful  fancies  about  it 
are,  though  it  is  good  to  have  indulged  our  splen- 
did fancies  in  youth,  if  only  for  the  delight  of 
learning  how  much  more  magnificent  is  the  real 
design. 

In  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  at  the  very  outset 
of  the  journey.  Evangelist  asks  Christian  why  he 
is  standing  still.     He  replies: 

"  Because  I  know  not  whither  to  go." 

Evangelist,  with  a  certain  grimness  of  humor, 
thereupon  hands  him  a  parchment  roll.  One  sup- 
poses that  it  will  be  a  map  or  a  paper  of  directions, 
but  all  that  it  has  written  in  it  is,  "  Fly  from  the 
wrath  to  come !  " 

.Well,  it  is  no  longer  that  of  which  we  are 
afraid,  a  rain  of  fire  and  brimstone,  storm  and  tem- 
pest! The  Power  behind  the  world  has  better 
gifts  than  these ;  but  we  still  have  to  fly,  where  we 
can  and  as  fast  as  we  can;  and  when  we  have 
traversed  the  dim  leagues,  and  have  seen  things 
wonderful  at  every  turn,  and  have  passed  through 
the  bitter  flood,  we  shall  find  —  at  least  this  is  my 
hope  —  no  guarded  city  of  God  from  which  we 
20 


Escape 

shall  go  no  more  out,  but  another  road  passing 
into  wider  fields  and  dimmer  uplands,  and  to  things 
more  and  more  wonderful  and  strange  and  un- 
known. 


«1 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 


n 

LITERATURE  AND  LIFE 

THERE  is  a  tendency,  not  by  any  means 
among  the  greater  writers,  but  among  what 
may  be  called  the  epigoni, —  the  satellites  of  litera- 
ture, the  men  who  would  be  great  if  they  knew 
how, —  to  speak  of  the  business  of  writing  as  if  it 
were  a  sacred  mystery,  pontifically  celebrated, 
something  remote  and  secret,  which  must  be 
guarded  from  the  vulgar  and  the  profane,  and 
which  requires  an  initiation  to  comprehend.  I  al- 
ways feel  rather  suspicious  of  this  attitude;  it 
seems  to  me  something  of  a  pose,  adopted  in  order 
to  make  other  people  envious  and  respectful.  It 
is  the  same  sort  of  precaution  as  the  "  properties  " 
of  the  wizard,  his  gown  and  wand,  the  stuffed 
crocodile  and  the  skeleton  in  the  corner;  for  if 
there  is  a  great  fuss  made  about  locking  and  dou- 
ble-locking a  box,  it  creates  a  presumption  of 
doubt  as  to  whether  there  is  anything  particular 

25 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

in  it.  In  my  nursery  days  one  of  my  brothers 
was  fond  of  locking  up  his  private  treasures  in  a 
box,  producing  it  in  public,  unfastening  it,  glanc- 
ing into  it  with  a  smile,  and  then  softly  closing  it 
and  turning  the  key  in  a  way  calculated  to  pro- 
voke the  most  intense  curiosity  as  to  the  contents ; 
but  upon  investigation  it  proved  to  contain  noth- 
ing but  the  wool  of  sheep,  dried  beans,  and  cases  of 
exploded  cartridges. 

So,  too,  I  have  known  both  writers  and  artists 
who  made  a  mystery  out  of  their  craft,  professed 
a  holy  rapture,  as  if  the  business  of  imagination 
and  the  art  of  setting  things  down  were  processes 
that  could  not  be  explained  to  ordinary  people, 
but  were  the  property  of  a  brotherhood.  And 
thus  grow  up  cliques  and  coteries,  of  people  who, 
by  mutual  admiration,  try  to  console  one  another 
for  the  absence  of  the  applause  which  the  world 
will  not  concede  them,  and  to  atone  for  the  cold- 
ness of  the  public  by  a  warmth  of  intimate  proxim- 
ity. 

This  does  not  in  the  least  apply  to  groups  of 

people  who  are  genuinely  and  keenly  interested  in 

art  of  any  kind,  and  form  a  congenial  circle  in 

which  they   discuss   frankly   and   enthusiastically 

S6 


Literature  and  Life 

methods  of  work,  the  books,  ideas,  pictures,  and 
music  which  interest  them.  That  is  quite  a  dif- 
ferent thing,  a  real  fortress  of  enthusiasm  in  the 
midst  of  Meshech  and  Kedar.  What  makes  it 
base  and  morbid  is  the  desire  to  exclude  for  the 
sake  of  exclusion ;  to  indulge  in  solitary  raptures, 
hoping  to  be  overheard ;  to  keep  the  tail  of  the  eye 
upon  the  public;  to  attempt  to  mystify;  and  to 
trade  upon  the  inquisitive  instinct  of  human  be- 
ings, the  natural  desire,  that  is,  to  know  what  is 
going  on  within  any  group  that  seems  to  have  ex- 
citing business  of  its  own. 

The  Preraphaelites,  for  instance,  were  a  group 
and  not  a  coterie.  They  were  engaged  in  working 
and  enjoying,  in  looking  out  for  artistic  promise, 
in  welcoming  and  praising  any  performance  of  a 
kind  that  Rossetti  recognized  as  "  stunning." 
They  were  sure  of  their  ground.  The  brother- 
hood, with  its  magazine,  "  The  Germ,"  and  its 
mystic  initials,  was  all  a  gigantic  game;  and  they 
held  together  because  they  were  revolutionary  in 
this,  that  they  wished  to  slay,  as  one  stabs  a  ty- 
rant, the  vulgarized  and  sentimental  art  of  the 
day.  They  did  not  effect  anything  like  a  revolu- 
tion, of  course.  It  was  but  a  ripple  on  the  flowing 
27 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

stream,  and  they  diverged  soon  enough,  most  of 
them,  into  definite  tracks  of  their  own.  The 
strength  of  the  movement  lay  in  the  fact  that  they 
hungered  and  thirsted  after  art,  clamoring  for 
beauty,  so  Mr.  Chesterton  says,  as  an  ordinary 
man  clamors  for  beer.  But  their  aim  was  not  to 
mystify  or  to  enlarge  their  own  consequence,  but 
to  convert  the  unbeliever,  and  to  produce  fine 
things. 

There  is  something  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  tempera- 
ment which  is  on  the  whole  unfavorable  to  move- 
ments and  groups ;  the  great  figures  of  the  Vic- 
torian time  in  art  and  literature  have  been  solitary 
men,  anarchical  as  regards  tradition,  strongly  in- 
dividualistic, working  on  their  own  lines  without 
much  regard  for  schools  or  conventions.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  is  deferential,  but  not  imitative;  he 
has  a  fancy  for  doing  things  in  his  own  way. 
Wordsworth,  Keats,  Shelley,  Byron  —  were  there 
ever  four  contemporary  poets  so  little  affected  by 
one  another's  work  ?  Think  of  the  phrase  in  which 
Scott  summed  up  his  artistic  creed,  saying  that 
he  had  succeeded,  in  so  far  as  he  had  succeeded, 
by  a  "  hurried  frankness  of  composition,"  which 
was  meant  to  please  young  and  eager  people.     It 


Literature  and  Life 

is  true  that  Wordsworth  had  a  solemn  majesty 
about  his  work,  practised  a  sort  of  priestly  func- 
tion, never  averse  to  entertaining  ardent  vis- 
itors by  conducting  them  about  his  grounds,  and 
showing  them  where  certain  poems  had  been  en- 
gendered. But  Wordsworth,  as  FitzGerald  truly 
said,  was  proud,  not  vain  —  proud  like  the  high- 
hung  cloud  or  the  solitary  peak.  He  felt  his  re- 
sponsibility, and  desired  to  be  felt  rather  than  to 
be  applauded. 

If  one  takes  the  later  giants,  Tennyson  had  a 
sense  of  magnificence,  a  childlike  self-absorption. 
He  said  once  in  the  same  breath  that  the  desire  of 
the  public  to  know  the  details  of  the  artist's  life 
was  the  most  degrading  and  debasing  curiosity, — 
it  was  ripping  people  up  like  pigs, —  and  added 
with  a  sigh  that  he  thought  that  there  was  a  con- 
gestion in  the  world  about  his  own  fame;  he  had 
received  no  complimentary  letters  for  several  days. 

Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  kept  his  raptures 
and  his  processes  severely  to  himself.  He  never 
seems  to  have  given  the  smallest  hint  as  to  how  he 
conceived  a  poem  or  worked  it  out.  He  was  as 
reticent  about  his  occupation  as  a  well-bred  stock- 
broker, and  did  his  best  in  society  to  give  the  im- 
29 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

pression  of  a  perfectly  decorous  and  conventional 
gentleman,  telling  strings  of  not  very  interesting 
anecdotes,  and  making  a  great  point  of  being  ordi- 
nary. Indeed,  I  believe  that  Browning  was 
haunted  by  the  eighteenth-century  idea  that  there 
was  something  not  quite  respectable  about  profes- 
sional literature,  and  that,  like  Gray,  he  wished 
to  be  considered  a  private  gentleman  who  wrote 
for  his  amusement.  When  in  later  years  he  took 
a  holiday,  he  went  not  for  secret  contemplation, 
but  to  recover  from  social  fatigue.  Browning  is 
really  one  of  the  most  mysterious  figures  in  litera- 
ture in  this  respect,  because  his  inner  life  of  poetry 
was  so  entirely  apart  from  his  outer  life  of  dinner- 
parties and  afternoon  calls.  Inside  the  sacred  in- 
closure,  the  winds  of  heaven  blow,  the  thunder 
rolls;  he  proclaims  the  supreme  worth  of  human 
passion,  he  dives  into  the  disgraceful  secrets  of  the 
soul :  and  then  he  comes  out  of  his  study  a  courte- 
ous and  very  proper  gentleman,  looking  like  a 
retired  diplomatist,  and  talking  like  an  intelligent 
commercial  traveler  —  a  man  whose  one  wish  ap- 
peared to  be  as  good-humoredly  like  every  one  else 
as  he  conveniently  could. 

What,  again,  is  one  to  make  of  Dickens,  with 
30 


Literature  and  Life 

his  love  of  private  theatricals,  his  florid  waistcoats 
and  watch-chains,  his  sentimental  radicalism,  his 
kindly,  convivial,  gregarious  life?  He,  again,  did 
his  work  in  a  rapture  of  solitary  creation,  and 
seemed  to  have  no  taste  for  discussing  his  ideas  or 
methods.  Then,  too,  Dickens's  later  desertion  of 
his  work  in  favor  of  public  readings  and  money- 
making  is  curious  to  note.  He  was  like  Shak- 
spere  in  this,  that  the  passion  of  his  later  life 
seemed  to  be  to  realize  an  ideal  of  bourgeois  pros- 
perity. Dickens  seems  to  have  regarded  his  art 
partly  as  a  means  of  social  reform,  and  partly  as  a 
method  of  making  money.  The  latter  aim  is  to  a 
great  extent  accounted  for  by  the  miserable  and 
humiliating  circumstances  of  his  early  life,  which 
bit  very  deep  into  him.  Yet  his  art  was  hardly 
an  end  in  itself,  but  something  through  which  he 
made  his  way  to  other  aims. 

Carlyle,  again,  was  a  writer  who  put  ideas  first, 
despised  his  craft  except  as  a  means  of  prophesy- 
ing, hated  literary  men  and  coteries,  preferred  aris- 
tocratic society,  while  at  the  same  time  he  loved 
to  say  how  unutterably  tiresome  he  found  it. 
Who  will  ever  understand  why  Carlyle  trudged 
many  miles  to  attend  parties  and  receptions  at 
31 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Bath  House,  where  the  Ashburtons  lived,  or  what 
stimulus  he  discerned  in  it?  I  have  a  belief  that 
Carlyle  felt  a  quite  unconscious  pride  in  the  fact 
that  he,  the  son  of  a  small  Scotch  farmer,  had  his 
assured  and  respected  place  among  a  semi-feudal 
circle,  just  as  I  have  very  little  doubt  that  his  mi- 
gration to  Craigenputtock  was  ultimately  sug- 
gested to  him  by  the  pleasure  and  dignity  of  being 
an  undoubted  laird,  and  living  among  his  own,  or 
at  least  his  wife's,  lands.  In  saying  this,  I  do  not 
wish  to  belittle  Carlyle,  or  to  accuse  him  of  what 
may  be  called  snobbishness.  He  had  no  wish  to 
worm  himself  by  slavish  deference  into  the  society 
of  the  great,  but  he  liked  to  be  able  to  walk  in  and 
say  his  say  there,  fearing  no  man;  it  was  like  a 
huge  mirror  that  reflected  his  own  independence. 
Yet  no  one  ever  said  harder  or  fiercer  things  of 
his  own  fellow-craftsmen.  His  description  of 
Charles  Lamb  as  "  a  pitiful  rickety,  gasping,  stag- 
gering, stammering  tom-fool "  is  not  an  amiable 
one !  Or  take  his  account  of  Wordsworth  —  how 
instead  of  a  hand-shake,  the  poet  intrusted  him 
with  "  a  handful  of  numb  unresponsive  fingers," 
and  how  his  speech  "  for  prolixity,  thinness,  end- 
less dilution  "  excelled  all  the  other  speech  that 


Literature  and  Life 

Carlyle  had  ever  heard  from  mortals.  He  admit- 
ted that  Wordsworth  was  "  a  genuine  man,  but 
intrinsically  and  extrinsically  a  small  one,  let  them 
sing  or  say  what  they  will."  In  fact,  Carlyle  de- 
spised his  trade :  one  of  the  most  vivid  and  voluble 
of  writers,  he  derided  the  desire  of  self-expression ; 
one  of  the  most  continuous  and  brilliant  of  talkers, 
he  praised  and  upheld  the  virtue  of  silence.  He 
spoke  and  wrote  of  himself  as  a  would-be  man  of 
action  condemned  to  twaddle;  and  Ruskin  ex- 
pressed very  trenchantly  what  will  always  be  the 
puzzle  of  Carlyle's  life  —  that,  as  Ruskin  said, 
he  groaned  and  gasped  and  lamented  over  the  in- 
tolerable burden  of  his  work,  and  that  yet,  when 
you  came  to  read  it,  you  found  it  all  alive,  full  of 
salient  and  vivid  details,  not  so  much  patiently 
collected,  as  obviously  and  patently  enjoyed. 
Again  there  is  the  mystery  of  his  lectures.  They 
seem  to  have  been  fiery,  eloquent,  impressive  ha- 
rangues; and  yet  Carlyle  describes  himself  stum- 
bling to  the  platform,  sleepless,  agitated,  and 
drugged,  inclined  to  say  that  the  best  thing  his 
audience  could  do  for  him  would  be  to  cover  him 
up  with  an  inverted  tub ;  while  as  he  left  the  plat- 
form among  signs  of  visible  emotion  and  torrents 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

of  applause,  he  thought,  he  said,  that  the  idea  of 
being  paid  for  such  stuff  made  him  feel  like  a  man 
who  had  been  robbing  hen-roosts. 

There  is  an  interesting  story  of  how  Tennyson 
once  stayed  with  Bradley,  when  Bradley  was  head- 
master of  Marlborough,  and  said  grimly  one  even- 
ing that  he  envied  Bradley,  with  all  his  heart,  his 
life  of  hard,  fruitful,  necessary  work,  and  owned 
that  he  sometimes  felt  about  his  own  poetry, 
what,  after  all,  did  all  this  elaborate  versifying 
amount  to,  and  who  was  in  any  way  the  better  or 
happier  for  it? 

The  truth  is  that  the  man  of  letters  forgets 
that  this  is  exactly  the  same  thought  as  that  which 
haunts  the  busy  man  after,  let  us  say,  a  day  of 
looking  over  examination-papers  or  attending  com- 
mittees. The  busy  man,  if  he  reflects  at  all,  is 
only  too  apt  to  say  to  himself,  "  Here  have  I  been 
slaving  away  like  a  stone-breaker,  reading  endless 
scripts,  discussing  an  infinity  of  petty  details,  and 
what  on  earth  is  the  use  of  it  all  ?  "  Yet  Sir  Al- 
fred Lyall  once  said  that  if  a  man  had  once  taken 
a  hand  in  big  public  affairs,  he  thought  of  litera- 
ture much  as  a  man  who  had  crossed  the  Atlantic 
in  a  sailing-yacht  might  think  of  sculling  a  boat 

34f 


Literature  and  Life 

upon  the  Thames.  One  of  the  things  that  moved 
Dr.  Johnson  to  a  tempest  of  wrath  was  when  on 
the  death  of  Lord  Lichfield,  the  Lord  Chancellor, 
Boswell  said  to  him  that  if  he  had  taken  to  the  law 
as  a  profession,  he  might  have  been  Lord  Chancel- 
lor, and  with  the  same  title.  Johnson  was  ex- 
tremely angry,  and  said  that  it  was  unfriendly  to 
remind  a  man  of  such  things  when  it  was  too  late. 

One  may  conclude  from  such  incidents  and  con- 
fessions that  even  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  of 
letters  have  been  haunted  by  the  sense  that  in  fol- 
lowing literature  they  have  not  chosen  the  best 
part,  and  that  success  in  public  life  is  a  more  use- 
ful thing  as  well  as  more  glorious. 

But  one  has  to  ask  oneself  what  exactly  an 
imaginative  man  means  by  success,  and  what  it  is 
that  attracts  him  in  the  idea  of  it.  Putting  aside 
the  more  obvious  and  material  advantages, — 
wealth,  position,  influence,  reputation, —  a  man  of 
far-reaching  mind  and  large  ideas  may  well  be 
haunted  by  a  feeling  that  if  he  had  entered  public 
life,  he  might  by  example,  precept,  influence,  legis- 
lation, have  done  something  to  turn  his  ideas  and 
schemes  into  accomplished  facts,  have  eff^ected 
some  moral  or  social  reform,  have  set  a  mark  on 
35 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

history.  It  must  be  remembered  that  a  great  writ- 
er's fame  is  often  a  posthumous  growth,  and  we 
must  be  very  careful  not  to  attribute  to  a  famous 
author  a  consciousness  in  his  lifetime  of  his  subse- 
quent, or  even  of  his  contemporary,  influence.  It 
is  undoubtedly  true  that  Ruskin  and  Carlyle  af- 
fected the  thought  of  their  time  to  an  extraordinary 
degree.  Ruskin  summed  up  in  his  teaching  an 
artistic  ideal  of  the  pursuit  and  influence  of  beauty, 
while  Carlyle  inculcated  a  more  combative  theory 
of  active  righteousness  and  the  hatred  of  cant. 
But  Ruskin's  later  years  were  spent  in  the  shadow 
of  a  profound  sense  of  failure.  He  thought  that 
the  public  enjoyed  his  pretty  phrases  and  derided 
his  ideas ;  while  Carlyle  felt  that  he  had  fulminated 
in  vain,  and  that  the  world  was  settling  down 
more  comfortably  than  ever  into  the  pursuit  of 
bourgeois  prosperity  and  dishonest  respectability. 
And  yet  if,  on  the  other  hand,  one  compares  the 
subsequent  fame  of  men  of  action  with  the  fame  of 
men  of  letters,  the  contrast  is  indeed  bewildering. 
Who  attaches  the  smallest  idea  to  the  personality 
of  the  Lord  Lichfield  whom  Dr.  Johnson  envied? 
Who  that  adores  the  memory  of  Wordsworth 
knows  anything  about  Lord  Goderich,  a  contem- 

36 


Literature  and  Life 

porary  prime  minister?  The  world  reads  and  re- 
reads the  memoirs  of  dead  poets,  goes  on  pil- 
grimage to  the  tiny  cottages  where  they  lived  in 
poverty,  cherishes  the  smallest  records  and  souve- 
nirs of  them.  The  names  of  statesmen  and  gen- 
erals become  dim  except  to  professed  historians, 
while  the  memories  of  great  romancers  and  lyrists, 
and  even  of  lesser  writers  still,  go  on  being  revived 
find  redecorated.  What  would  Keats  have  thought, 
as  he  lay  dying  in  his  high,  hot,  noisy  room  at 
Rome,  if  he  had  known  that  a  century  later  every 
smallest  detail  of  his  life,  his  most  careless  letters, 
would  be  scanned  by  eager  eyes,  when  few  save 
historians  would  be  able  to  name  a  single  member 
of  the  cabinet  in  power  at  the  time  of  his  death? 
There  is  a  charming  story  told  by  Lord  Mor- 
ley,  of  how  he  once  met  Rossetti  in  the  street  at 
Chelsea  when  a  general  parliamentary  election  was 
going  on,  and  it  transpired,  after  a  few  remarks, 
that  Rossetti  was  not  even  aware  that  this  was  the 
case.  When  he  was  informed,  he  said  with  some 
hesitation  that  he  supposed  that  one  side  or 
other  would  get  in,  and  that,  after  all,  it  did  not 
very  much  matter.  Lord  Morley,  telling  the  anec- 
dote, said  that  he  himself  had  forgotten  which 
37 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

side  did  get  in,  from  which  he  concluded  that  it  had 
not  very  much  mattered. 

The  truth  is  that  national  life  has  to  go  on, 
and  that  very  elaborate  arrangements  are  made  by 
statesmen  and  politicians  for  its  administration. 
But  it  is  in  reality  very  unimportant.  The  wisest 
statesman  in  the  world  cannot  affect  it  very  much ; 
he  can  only  take  advantage  of  the  trend  of  public 
opinion.  If  he  outruns  it,  he  is  instantly  stranded ; 
and  perhaps  the  most  he  can  do  is  to  foresee  how 
people  will  be  thinking  some  six  weeks  ahead. 
But  meanwhile  the  writer  is  speaking  from  the  soul 
and  to  the  soul ;  he  is  suggesting,  inspiring,  stimu- 
lating; he  is  presenting  thoughts  in  so  beautiful  a 
form  that  they  become  desirable  and  adorable ;  and 
what  the  average  man  believes  to-day  is  what  the 
idealist  has  believed  half  a  century  before.  He 
must  take  his  chance  of  fame ;  and  his  best  hope  is 
to  eschew  rhetoric,  which  implies  the  consciousness 
of  opponents  and  auditors,  and  just  present  his 
dreams  and  visions  as  serenely  and  beautifully  as 
he  can.  The -statesman  has  to  argue,  to  strive,  to 
compromise,  to  convert  if  he  can,  to  coerce  if  he 
cannot.  It  is  a  dusty  encounter,  and  he  must 
sacrifice  grace  and  perhaps  truth  in  the  onset.  He 
38 


Literature  and  Life 

may  gain  his  point,  achieve  the  practicable  and 
the  second  best;  but  he  is  an  opportunist  and  a 
schemer,  and  he  cannot  make  life  into  what  he 
wills,  but  only  into  what  he  can  manage.  Of 
course  the  writer  in  a  way  risks  more;  he  may 
reject  the  homely,  useful  task,  and  yet  not  have 
the  strength  to  fit  wings  to  his  visions ;  he  may  live 
fruitlessly  and  die  unpraised,  with  the  thought  that 
he  has  lost  two  birds  in  the  hand  for  one  which  is 
not  even  in  the  bush.  He  may  turn  out  a  mere 
Don  Quixote,  helmeted  with  a  barber's  basin  and 
tilting  against  windmills ;  but  he  could  not  choose 
otherwise,  and  he  has  paid  a  heavier  price  for  his 
failure  than  many  a  man  has  paid  for  his  success. 
It  is  probably  a  wholly  false  antithesis  to  speak 
of  life  as  a  contrast  to  literature;  one  might  as 
well  draw  a  distinction  between  eating  and  drink- 
ing. What  is  meant  as  a  rule  is  that  if  a  man 
devotes  himself  to  imaginative  creation,  to  the  per- 
ception and  expression  of  beauty,  he  must  be  pre- 
pared to  withdraw  from  other  activities.  But  the 
imagination  is  a  function  of  life,  after  all,  and 
precisely  the  same  holds  good  of  stock-broking.  ' 
The  real  fact  is  that  we  Anglo-Saxons,  by  in- 
stinct and  inheritance,  think  of  the  acquisition  of 
39 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

property  as  the  most  obvious  function  of  life.  As 
long  as  a  man  is  occupied  in  acquiring  property, 
we  ask  no  further  questions ;  we  take  for  granted 
that  he  is  virtuously  employed,  as  long  as  he  breaks 
no  social  rules :  while  if  he  succeeds  in  getting  into 
his  hands  an  unusual  share  of  the  divisible  goods 
of  the  world,  we  think  highly  of  him.  Indeed,  our 
ideals  have  altered  very  little  since  barbarous  times, 
and  we  still  are  under  the  impression  that  resource- 
fulness is  the  mark  of  the  hero.  I  imagine  that 
leisure  as  an  occupation  is  much  more  distrusted 
and  disapproved  of  in  America  than  in  England; 
but  even  in  England,  where  the  power  to  be  idle  is 
admired  and  envied,  a  man  who  lives  as  heroic  a 
life  as  can  be  attained  by  playing  golf  and  shoot- 
ing pheasants  is  more  trusted  and  respected  than  a 
rich  man  who  paints  or  composes  music  for  his 
amusement.  Field  sports  are  intelligible  enough; 
the  pursuit  of  art  requires  some  explanation,  and 
incurs  a  suspicion  of  effeminacy  or  eccentricity. 
Only  when  authorship  becomes  a  source  of  profit 
is  it  thoroughly  respectable. 

I  had  a  friend  who  died  not  very  long  ago.     He 
had  in  his  younger  days  done  a  little  administra- 
tive work ;  but  he  was  wealthy,  and  at  a  compara- 
40 


Literature  and  Life 

tivelj  early  age  he  abandoned  himself  to  leisure. 
He  traveled,  he  read,  he  went  much  into  society, 
he  enjoyed  the  company  of  his  friends.  When  he 
died  he  was  spoken  of  as  an  amateur,  and  praised 
as  a  cricketer  of  some  merit.  Even  his  closest 
friends  seemed  to  find  it  necessary  to  explain  and 
make  excuses;  he  was  shy,  he  stammered,  he  was 
not  suited  to  parliamentary  life;  but  I  can  think 
of  few  people  who  did  so  much  for  his  friends  or 
who  so  radiated  the  simplest  sort  of  happiness. 
To  be  welcomed  by  him,  to  be  with  him,  put  a  little 
glow  on  life,  because  you  felt  instinctively  that  he 
was  actively  enjoying  every  hour  of  your  company. 
I  thought,  I  remember,  at  his  death,  how  hopeless 
it  was  to  assess  a  man's  virtue  and  usefulness  in 
the  terms  of  his  career.  If  he  had  entered  Parlia- 
ment, registered  a  silent  vote,  spent  his  time  in 
social  functions,  letter-writing,  lobby-gossip,  he 
would  have  been  acclaimed  as  a  man  of  weight  and 
influence ;  but  as  it  was,  though  he  had  stood  by 
friends  in  trouble,  had  helped  lame  dogs  over  stiles, 
had  been  the  center  of  good-will  and  mutual  under- 
standing to  a  dozen  groups  and  circles,  it  seemed 
impossible  to  recognize  that  he  had  done  anything 
in  his  generation.  It  is  not  to  be  claimed  that  his 
41 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

was  a  life  of  persistent  benevolence  or  devoted 
energy;  but  I  thought  of  a  dozen  men  who  had 
lived  selfishly  and  comfortably,  making  money  and 
amassing  fortunes,  without  a  touch  of  real  kind- 
ness or  fine  tenderness  about  them,  who  would  yet 
be  held  to  have  done  well  and  to  have  deserved 
respect,  when  compared  with  this  peace-maker ! 

And  then  I  perceived  how  intolerably  false  many 
of  our  cherished  ideals  are;  that  apart  from  lives 
of  pure  selfishness  and  annexation,  many  a  pro- 
fessed philanthropist  or  active  statesman  is  merely 
following  a  sterile  sort  of  ambition ;  that  it  is  rare 
on  the  whole  for  so-called  public  men  to  live  for 
the  sake  of  the  public;  while  the  simple,  kindly, 
uncalculating,  friendly  attitude  to  life  is  a  real 
source  of  grace  and  beauty,  and  leaves  behind  it 
a  fragrant  memory  enshrined  in  a  hundred  hearts. 

So,  too,  when  it  comes  to  what  we  call  literature. 
No  one  supposes  that  we  can  do  without  it,  and  in 
its  essence  it  is  but  an  extension  of  happy,  fine, 
vivid  talk.  It  is  but  the  delighted  perception  of 
life,  the  ecstasy  of  taking  a  hand  in  the  great  mys- 
tery, the  joy  of  love  and  companionship,  the  wor- 
ship of  beauty  and  desire  and  energy  and  memory 
taking  shape  in  the  most  effective  form  that  man 

42 


Literature  and  Life 

can  devise.  There  is  no  real  merit  in  the  accumu- 
lation of  property;  only  the  people  who  do  the 
necessary  work  of  the  world,  and  the  people  who 
increase  the  joy  of  the  world  are  worth  a  moment's 
thought,  and  yet  both  alike  are  little  regarded. 

Of  course  where  the  weakness  of  the  artistic  life 
really  lies  is  that  it  is  often  not  taken  up  out  of 
mere  communicativeness  and  happy  excitement, 
as  a  child  tells  a  breathless  tale,  but  as  a  device 
for  attracting  the  notice  and  earning  the  applause 
of  the  world ;  and  then  it  is  on  a  par  with  all  other 
self-regarding  activities.  But  if  it  is  taken  up 
with  a  desire  to  give  rather  than  to  receive,  as  an 
irrepressible  sharing  of  delight,  it  becomes  not  a 
solemn  and  dignified  affair,  but  just  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  uncalculating  impulses  in  the 
world. 

Then  there  falls  another  shadow  across  the  path ; 
the  unhappiest  natures  I  know  are  the  natures  of 
keen  emotion  and  swift  perception  who  yet  have 
not  the  gift  of  expressing  what  they  feel  in  any 
artistic  medium.  It  is  these,  alas!  who  cumber 
the  streets  and  porticoes  of  literature.  They  are 
attracted  away  from  homely  toil  by  the  perilous 
sweetness  of  art,  and  when  they  attempt  to  ex- 
43 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

press  their  raptures,  they  have  no  faculty  or  knack 
of  hand.  And  these  men  and  women  fall  with  zeal- 
ous dreariness  or  acrid  contemptuousness,  and 
radiate  discomfort  and  uneasiness  about  them. 

"  A  book,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  should  show  one 
either  how  to  enjoy  life  or  how  to  endure  it" — 
was  ever  the  function  of  literature  expressed  more 
pungently  or  justly?  Any  man  who  enjoys  or 
endures  has  a  right  to  speak,  if  he  can.  If  he  can 
help  others  to  enjoy  or  to  endure,  then  he  need 
never  be  in  any  doubt  as  to  his  part  in  life ;  while  if 
he  cannot  ecstatically  enjoy,  he  can  at  least  good- 
humoredly  endure. 


U 


THE  NEW  POETS 


m 

THE  NEW  POETS 

THERE  'S  a  dark  window  in  a  gable  which 
looks  out  over  my  narrow  slip  of  garden, 
where  the  almond-trees  grow,  and  to-day  the  dark 
window,  with  its  black  casement  lines,  had  become 
suddenly  a  Japanese  panel.  The  almond  was  in 
bloom,  with  its  delicious,  pink,  geometrical  flowers, 
not  a  flower  which  wins  one's  love,  somehow;  it  is 
not  homely  or  sweet  enough  for  that.  But  it  is 
unapproachably  pure  and  beautiful,  with  a  touch 
of  fanaticism  about  it  —  the  fanaticism  which 
comes  of  stainless  strength,  as  though  one  woke 
in  the  dawn  and  found  an  angel  in  one's  room: 
he  would  not  quite  understand  one's  troubles ! 

But  when  I  looked  lower  down,  there  was  a 
sweeter  message  still,  for  the  mezereon  was  awake, 
with  its  tiny  porcelain  crimson  flowers  and  its  mi- 
nute leaves  of  bright  green,  budding  as  I  think 
Aaron's  rod  must  have  budded,  the  very  crust  of 
47 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  sprig  bursting  into  little  flames  of  green  and 
red. 

I  thought  at  the  sight  of  all  this  that  some 
good  fortune  was  about  to  befall  me ;  and  so  it  did. 
When  I  came  back  there  came  a  friend  to  see  me 
whom  I  seldom  see  and  much  enjoy  seeing.  He  is 
young,  but  he  plays  a  fine  part  in  the  world,  and 
he  carries  about  with  him  two  very  fine  qualities; 
one  is  a  great  and  generous  curiosity  about  what 
our  writers  are  doing.  He  is  the  first  man  from 
whom  I  hear  of  new  and  beautiful  work;  and  he 
praises  it  royally,  he  murmurs  phrases,  he  even 
declaims  it  in  his  high,  thin  voice,  which  wavers 
like  a  dry  flame.  And  what  makes  all  this  so  re- 
freshing is  that  his  other  great  quality  is  an  in- 
tensely critical  spirit,  which  stares  closely  and  in- 
tently at  work,  as  though  a  crystalline  lens. 

After  we  had  talked  a  little,  I  said  to  him : 

"  Come,  praise  me  some  new  writers,  you  herald 
of  the  dawn !  You  always  do  that  when  you  come 
to  see  me,  and  you  must  do  it  now."  He  smiled 
secretly,  and  drew  out  a  slim  volume  from  his 
pocket  and  read  me  some  verses;  I  will  not  be 
drawn  into  saying  the  name  of  the  poet. 

"  How  do  you  find  that  ?  "  he  said. 
48 


The  New  Poets 

"  Oh,"  I  said,  "  it  is  very  good ;  but  is  it  the 
finest  gold?  " 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  it  is  that."  And  he  then  read 
me  some  more. 

"  Now,"  I  said,  "  I  will  be  frank  with  you. 
That  seems  to  me  very  musical  and  accomplished ; 
but  it  has  what  is  to  me  the  one  unpardonable 
fault  in  poetry:  it  is  literary.  He  has  heard  and 
read,  that  poet,  so  much  sweet  and  solemn  verse, 
that  his  mind  murmurs  like  a  harp  hung  among 
the  trees  that  are  therein;  the  winds  blow  into 
music.  But  I  don't  want  that ;  I  want  a  fount  of 
song,  a  spring  of  living  water."  He  looked  a  lit- 
tle vexed  at  that,  and  read  me  a  few  more  pages. 
And  then  he  went  on  to  praise  the  work  of  two 
or  three  other  writers,  and  added  that  he  believed 
there  was  going  to  be  a  great  outburst  of  poetry 
after  a  long  frost. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  I  am  sure  I  hope  so.  And  if 
there  is  one  thing  in  the  world  that  I  desire,  it  is 
that  I  may  be  able  to  recognize  and  love  the  new 
voices." 

And  then  I  told  him  a  story  of  which  I  often 
think.  When  I  was  a  young  man,  very  much  pre- 
occupied with  Tennyson  and  Omar  Khayyam  and 
49 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Swinburne,  I  went  to  stay  with  an  elderly  business 
man,  a  friend  of  my  family.  He  was  a  great 
stout,  rubicund  man,  very  good-natured,  and  he 
had  a  voice  like  the  cry  of  an  expiring  mouse, 
shrill  and  thin.  We  were  sitting  after  dinner  in 
his  big  dining-room,  several  of  us,  looking  out  into 
a  wide,  dusty  garden,  when  the  talk  turned  on 
books,  and  I  suppose  I  praised  Swinburne,  for  he 
asked  me  to  say  some,  and  I  quoted  the  poem  which 
says 

And  even  the  weariest  river 
Winds  somewhere  safe  to  sea. 

He  heard  me  attentively  enough,  and  said  it  was 
pretty  good;  but  then  he  said  that  it  was  nothing 
to  Byron,  and  in  his  squeaky  voice  he  quoted  a 
quantity  of  Byron,  whose  poetry,  I  am  sorry  to 
say,  I  regarded  as  I  might  regard  withered  flow- 
ers or  worse.  His  eyes  brimmed  with  tears,  and 
they  fell  on  to  his  shirt-front;  and  then  he  said 
decisively  tha^  there  had  been  no  poetry  since 
Byron  —  none  at  all.  Tennyson  was  mere  word 
music.  Browning  was  unintelligible,  and  so  forth. 
And  I  remember  how,  with  the  insolence  of  youth, 
I  thought  how  dreadful  it  was  that  the  old  man 
60 


The  New  Poets 

should  have  lost  all  sympathy  and  judgment;  be- 
cause poetry  then  seemed  to  me  a  really  important 
matter,  full  of  tones  and  values.  I  did  not  under- 
stand then,  as  I  understand  now,  that  it  is  all  a 
question  of  signals  and  symbols,  and  that  poetry 
is  but,  as  the  psalm  says,  what  happens  when  one 
day  telleth  another  and  one  night  certifieth  an- 
other. I  know  now  that  there  can  be  no  deceit 
about  poetry,  and  that  no  poet  can  make  you  feel 
more  than  he  feels  himself,  though  he  cannot  al- 
ways make  another  feel  as  much;  and  that  the 
worth  of  his  art  exists  only  just  in  so  far  as  he  can 
say  what  he  feels;  and  then  I  thought  of  my  old 
friend's  mind  as  I  might  think  of  a  scarecrow 
among  lonely  fields,  a  thing  absurd,  ragged,  and 
left  alone,  while  real  men  went  about  their  busi- 
ness. I  did  not  say  it,  but  I  thought  it  in  my 
folly.  So  I  told  my  young  friend  that  story ;  and 
I  said: 

"  I  know  that  it  does  not  really  matter  what  one 
loves  and  is  moved  by  as  long  as  one  loves  some- 
thing and  is  moved  by  its  beauty.  But,  still,  I 
do  not  want  that  to  happen  to  me;  I  do  not  want 
to  be  like  a  pebble  on  the  beach,  when  the  water 
draws  past  it  to  the  land.  I  want  to  feel  and 
51 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

understand  the  new  signals.  In  the  nursery,"  I 
said,  "  we  used  to  anger  our  governess  when  she 
read  us  a  piece  of  poetry,  by  saying  to  her,  '  Who 
made  it  up  ?  '  You  should  say,  '  Who  wrote  it  ?  ' 
she  would,  say.  But  I  feel  now  inclined  to  ask, 
'  Who  made  it  up  ? '  and  I  feel,  too,  like  the  sign- 
painter  on  his  rounds,  who  saw  a  new  sign  hung  up 
at  an  inn,  and  said  in  disgust,  '  That  looks  as  if 
some  one  had  been  doing  it  himself.'  Your  poet 
seems  to  me  only  a  very  gifted  and  accomplished 
amateur." 

"  Well,"  he  said  rather  petulantly,  **  it  may  be 
so,  of  course;  but  I  don't  think  that  you  can  hope 
to  advance,  if  you  begin  by  being  determined  to 
disapprove." 

"  No,  not  that,"  I  said.  "  But  one  knows  of 
many  cases  of  inferior  poets,  who  were  taken  up 
and  trumpeted  abroad  by  well-meaning  admirers, 
whom  one  sees  now  to  have  had  no  significance,  but 
to  be  so  many  blind  alleys  in  the  street  of  art; 
they  led  nowhere;  one  had  just  to  retrace  one's 
steps,  if  one  explored  them.  Indeed,"  I  said,  "  I 
had  rather  miss  a  great  poet  than  be  misled  by  a 
little  one." 

"  Ah,  no,"  he  said,  "  I  don't  feel  that.     I  had 


The  New  Poets 

rather  be  thrilled  and  carried  away,  even  if  I  dis- 
covered afterwards  that  it  was  not  really  great." 
"  If  you  will  freely  admit  that  this  may  not  be 
great,"  I  said,  "  I  am  on  your  side.  I  do  not 
mind  your  saying,  '  This  touches  me  with  interest 
and  delight ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  reckoned  among  the 
lords  of  the  garden.'  What  I  object  to  is  your 
saying,  *  This  is  great  and  eternal.'  I  feel  that  I 
should  be  able  to  respond  to  the  great  poet,  if  he 
flashed  out  among  us ;  but  he  must  be  great,  and 
especially  in  a  time  when  there  really  is  a  quantity 
of  very  beautiful  verse.  I  suspect  that  per- 
haps this  time  is  one  that  will  furnish  a  very  beau- 
tiful anthology.  There  are  many  people  alive 
who  have  written  perhaps  half  a  dozen  exquisite 
lyrics,  when  the  spring  and  the  soaring  thought 
and  the  vision  and  the  beautiful  word  all  suddenly 
conspired  together.  But  there  is  no  great,  wide, 
large,  tender  heart  at  work.  No,  I  won't  even  say 
that ;  but  is  there  any  great  spirit  who  has  all  that 
and  a  supreme  word-power  as  well.''  I  believe  that 
there  is  more  poetry,  more  love  of  beauty,  more 
emotion  in  the  world  than  ever ;  and  a  great  many 
men  and  women  are  living  their  poetry  who  just 
can't  write  it  or  sing  it." 
53 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

"  A  perverse  generation  seeking  after  a  sign,"  he 
said  rather  grimly,  "  and  there  is  no  sign  forth- 
coming except  the  old  sign,  that  has  been  there  for 
centuries  1  I  don't  care,"  he  added,  "  about  the 
sign  of  the  thing.  It  is  the  quality  that  I  want ; 
and  these  new  poets  of  whom  I  have  been  speaking 
have  got  the  quality.     That  is  all  I  ask  for." 

"  No,"  I  said,  "  I  want  a  great  deal  more  than 
that!  Browning  gave  us  the  sense  of  the  human 
heart,  bewildered  by  all  the  new  knowledge,  and  yet 
passionately  desiring.     Tennyson — " 

"  Poor  old  Tennyson !  "  he  said. 

"  That  is  very  ungracious,"  I  said.  "  You  are 
as  perverse  as  I  was  about  Byron  when  the  old 
banker  quoted  him  with  tears.  I  was  going  to  say, 
and  I  will  say  it,  that  Tennyson,  with  all  his  faults, 
was  a  great  lord  of  music ;  and  he  put  into  words 
the  fine,  homely  domestic  emotion  of  the  race  —  the 
poetry  of  labor,  order,  and  peace.  It  was  new 
and  rich  and  splendid,  and  because  it  seems  to  you 
old-fashioned,  you  call  it  mere  respectability;  but 
it  was  the  marching  music  of  the  world,  because 
he  showed  men  that  faith  was  enlarged  and  not 
overturned  by  science.  These  two  were  great, 
because  they  saw  far  and  wide;  they  knew  by  in- 
54 


The  New  Poets 

stinct  just  what  the  ordinary  man  was  thinking, 
who  yet  wished  his  life  to  be  set  to  music.  These 
little  men  of  yours  don't  see  that.  They  have 
their  moments  of  ecstasy,  as  we  all  have,  in  the  blos- 
soming orchard  full  of  the  songs  of  birds.  And 
that  will  always  and  forever  give  us  the  lyric,  if 
the  skill  is  there.  But  I  want  something  more 
than  that ;  I,  you,  thousands  of  people,  are  feeling 
something  that  makes  the  brain  thrill  and  the  heart 
leap.  The  mischief  is  that  we  don't  know  what 
it  is,  and  I  want  a  great  poet  to  come  and  tell  us." 
"  Ah,"  he  said,  "  I  am  afraid  you  want  some- 
thing ethical,  something  that  satisfies  the  man  in 
Tennyson  who 

Walked  between  his  wife  and  child 
And  now  and  then  he  gravely  smiled. 

But  we  have  done  with  all  that.  What  we  want  is 
people  who  can  express  the  fine,  rare,  unusual 
thoughts  of  highly  organized  creatures,  and  you 
want  a  poet  to  sing  of  bread  and  butter !  " 

«  Why,  yes,"  I  said,  "  I  think  I  agree  with  Fitz- 
Gerald  that  tea  and  bread  and  butter  are  the  only 
foods  worth  anything  —  the  only  things  one  can- 
not do  without.     And  it  is  just  the  things  that  one 
65 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

cannot  do  without  that  I  want  the  new  great  poet 
to  sing  of.  I  agree  with  William  Morris  that  art 
is  the  one  thing  we  all  want,  the  expression  of 
man's  joy  in  his  work.  And  the  more  that  art 
retires  into  fine  nuances  and  intellectual  subtle- 
ties, the  more  that  it  becomes  something  esoteric 
and  mysterious,  the  less  I  care  about  it.  When 
Tennyson  said  to  the  farmer's  wife,  '  What 's  the 
news  ?  '  she  replied,  '  Mr.  Tennyson,  there  's  only 
one  piece  of  news  worth  telling,  and  that  is  that 
Christ  died  for  all  men.'  Tennyson  said  very 
grandly  and  simply, '  Ah,  that 's  old  news  and  good 
news  and  new  news ! '  And  that  is  exactly  what  I 
want  the  poets  to  tell  us.  It  is  a  common  inherit- 
ance, not  a  refined  monopoly,  that  I  claim." 

He  laughed  at  this,  and  said : 

"  I  think  that 's  rather  a  mid- Victorian  view ;  I 
will  confute  you  out  of  the  Tennyson  legend. 
When  Tennyson  called  Swinburne's  verse  '  poison- 
ous honey,  brought  from  France,'  Swinburne  re- 
torted by  speaking  of  the  laureate's  domestic  trea- 
cle. You  can't  have  both.  If  you  like  treacle, 
you  must  not  clamor  for  honey." 

"  Yes,  I  prefer  honey,"  I  said,  "  but  you  seem 
to  me  to  be  in  search  of  what  I  called  literary  po- 

56 


The  New  Poets 

etry.  That  is  what  I  am  afraid  of.  I  don't  want 
the  work  of  a  mind  fed  on  words,  and  valuing  ideas 
the  more  that  they  are  uncommon.  I  hate  what  is 
called  '  strong '  poetry ;  that  seems  to  me  to  be 
generally  the  coarsest  kind  of  romanticism  — 
melodrama  in  fact.  I  want  to  have  in  poetry  what 
we  are  getting  in  fiction  —  the  best  sort  of  realism. 
Realism  is  now  abjuring  the  heroic  theory;  it  has 
thrown  over  the  old  conventions,  the  felicitous  co- 
incidences, life  arranged  on  ideal  lines ;  and  it  has 
gone  straight  to  life  itself,  strong,  full-blooded, 
eager  life,  full  of  mistakes  and  blunders  and  fail- 
ures and  sharp  disasters  and  fears.  Life  goes 
shambling  along  like  a  big  dog,  but  it  has  got  its 
nose  on  the  scent  of  something.  It  is  a  much 
more  mysterious  and  prodigious  affair  than  life 
rearranged  upon  romantic  lines.  It  means  some- 
thing very  vast  indeed,  though  it  splashes  through 
mud  and  scrambles  through  hedges.  You  may 
laugh  at  what  you  call  ethics,  but  that  is  only  a 
name  for  one  of  many  kinds  of  collisions.  It  is 
the  fact  that  we  are  always  colliding  with  some- 
thing, always  coming  unpleasant  croppers,  that  is 
the  exciting  thing.  I  want  the  poet  to  tell  me 
what  the  obscure  winged  thing  it  is  that  we  are  fol- 

67 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

lowing;  and  if  he  can't  explain  it  to  me,  I  want 
to  be  made  to  feel  that  it  is  worth  while  following. 
I  don't  say  that  all  life  is  poetical  material.  I 
don't  think  that  it  is;  but  there  is  a  thing  called 
beauty  which  seems  to  me  the  most  maddeningly 
perfect  thing  in  the  world.  I  see  it  everywhere, 
in  the  dawn,  in  the  far-ofF  landscape,  with  all  its 
rolling  lines  of  wood  and  field,  in  the  faces  and 
gestures  of  people,  in  their  words  and  deeds. 
That  is  a  clue,  a  golden  thread,  a  line  of  scent, 
and  I  shall  be  more  than  content  if  I  am  encour- 
aged to  follow  that." 

"  Ah,"  he  said,  "  now  I  partly  agree  with  you. 
It  is  precisely  that  which  the  new  men  are  after; 
they  take  the  pure  gold  of  life  and  just  coin  it  into 
word  and  phrase,  and  it  is  that  which  I  discern 
in  them." 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  but  I  want  something  a  great 
deal  bigger  than  that.  I  want  to  see  it  everywhere 
and  in  everything.  I  don't  want  to  have  to  wall 
in  a  little  space  and  make  it  silent  and  beautiful, 
and  forget  what  is  happening  outside.  I  want  a 
poet  to  tell  me  what  it  is  that  leaps  in  the  eyes  and 
beckons  in  the  smiles  of  people  whom  I  meet  — 
people  whom  often  enough  I  could  not  live  with, — 

58 


The  New  Poets 

the  more  's  the  pity, —  but  whom  I  want  to  be 
friends  with,  all  the  same.  I  want  the  common 
joys  and  hopes  and  visions  to  be  put  into  music. 
And  when  I  find  a  man,  like  Walt  Whitman,  who 
does  show  me  the  beauty  and  wonder  and  the  strong 
affections  and  joys  of  simple  hearts,  so  that  I  feel 
sure  that  we  are  all  desiring  the  same  thing,  though 
we  cannot  tell  each  other  what  it  is,  then  I  feel  I 
am  in  the  presence  of  a  poet  indeed." 

My  young  friend  shut  up  the  little  book  which 
he  had  been  holding  in  his  hand. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  that  would  be  a  great  thing ; 
but  one  can't  get  at  things  in  that  way  now.  We 
must  all  specialize;  and  if  you  want  to  follow  the 
new  aims  and  ideals  of  art,  you  must  put  aside  a 
great  deal  of  what  is  called  our  common  humanity, 
and  you  must  be  content  to  follow  a  very  narrow 
path  among  the  stars.  I  do  not  mind  speaking 
quite  frankly.  I  do  not  think  you  understand 
what  art  is.  It  is  essentially  a  mystery,  and  the 
artist  is  a  sort  of  hermit  in  the  world.  It  is  not  a 
case  of  'joys  in  widest  commonalty  spread,'  as 
Daddy  Wordsworth  said.  That  is  quite  a  differ- 
ent affair ;  but  art  has  got  to  withdraw  itself,  to  be 
content  to  be  misunderstood ;  and  I  think  that  you 
59 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

have  just  as  much  parted  company  with  it  as  your 
old  friend  the  banker." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  we  shall  see.  Anyhow,  I  will 
give  your  new  poets  a  careful  reading,  and  I  shall 
be  glad  if  I  can  really  admire  them,  because,  indeed, 
I  don't  want  to  be  stranded  on  a  lee  shore." 

And  so  my  friend  departed;  and  I  began  to 
wonder  whether  the  art  of  which  he  spoke  was  not, 
after  all,  as  real  a  thing  as  the  beauty  of  my 
almond-flower  and  my  mezereons !  If  so,  I  should 
like  to  be  able  to  include  it  and  understand  it, 
though  I  do  not  want  to  think  that  it  is  the  end. 


60 


WALT  WHITMAN 


IV 

WALT  WHITMAN 

1 

THERE  come  days  and  hours  in  the  lives  of 
the  busiest,  most  active,  most  eager  of  us, 
when  we  suddenly  realize  with  a  shock  or  a  shud- 
der, it  may  be,  or  perhaps  with  a  sense  of  solemn 
mystery,  that  has  something  vast,  inspiring,  hope- 
ful about  it,  the  solidity  and  the  isolation  of  our 
own  identity.  Much  of  our  civilized  life  is  an  at- 
tempt, not  deliberate  but  instinctive,  to  escape  from 
this.  We  organize  ourselves  into  nations  and 
parties,  into  sects  and  societies,  into  families  and 
companies,  that  we  may  try  to  persuade  ourselves 
that  we  are  not  alone ;  and  we  get  nearest  to  per- 
suading ourselves  that  we  are  at  one,  when  we  enter 
into  the  secrets  of  love  or  friendship,  and  feel  that 
we  know  as  we  are  known.  But  even  that  vision 
fades,  and  we  become  aware,  at  sad  moments,  that 
the  comradeship  is  over;  the  soul  that  came  so 
63 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

close  to  us,  smiled  in  our  eyes,  was  clasped  to  our 
heart,  has  left  us,  has  passed  into  the  darkness,  or 
if  it  still  lives  and  breathes,  has  drawn  away  into 
the  crowd.  And  then  one  sees  that  no  fusion  is 
possible,  that  half  the  secrets  of  the  heart  must 
remain  unguessed  and  untold.  That  even  if  one 
had  the  words  to  do  it,  one  could  not  express  the 
sense  of  our  personality,  much  of  which  escapes 
even  our  own  conscious  and  critical  thought.  One 
has,  let  us  say,  a  serious  quarrel  with  a  close  friend, 
and  one  hears  him  explaining  and  protesting,  and 
yet  he  does  not  know  what  has  happened,  cannot 
understand,  cannot  even  perceive  where  the  offense 
lay ;  and  at  such  a  moment  it  may  dawn  on  us  that 
we  too  do  not  know  what  we  have  done;  we  have 
exhibited  some  ugly  part  of  ourselves,  of  which  we 
are  not  conscious;  we  have  stricken  and  wounded 
another  heart,  and  we  cannot  see  how  it  was  done. 
We  did  not  intend  to  do  it,  we  cry.  Or  again  we 
realize  that  we  regard  some  one  with  a  causeless 
aversion,  and  cannot  give  any  reason  for  it ;  or  we 
see  that  we  ourselves  have  the  same  freezing  and 
disconcerting  effect  upon  another;  and  so  after 
hundreds  of  such  experiences,  we  become  aware  at 
last   that  no   real,  free,  entire  communication  is 

64 


Walt  Whitman 

possible ;  that  however  eagerly  we  tell  our  thoughts 
and  display  our  temperaments,  there  must  always 
remain  something  which  is  wrapped  in  darkness, 
the  incommunicable  essence  of  ourself  that  can 
blend  with  no  other  soul. 

But  again  It  Is  true  that  all  human  souls  who 
have  an  instinct  for  expression  —  writers,  painters, 
musicians  —  have  always  been  trying  to  do  this  one 
thing,  to  make  signals,  to  communicate,  to  reveal 
themselves,  to  "  unpack  the  heart  in  words  " ;  and 
what  has  often  hindered  the  process  and  nullified 
their  efforts  has  been  an  uneasy  dignity  and  van- 
ity, that  must  try  to  make  out  a  better  case  than 
the  facts  justify.  For  a  variety  of  motives,  and 
indeed  for  the  best  of  motives,  men  and  women 
suppress,  exalt,  refine  the  presentment  of  them- 
selves, because  they  desire  to  be  loved,  and  think 
that  they  must  therefore  be  careful  to  be  ad- 
mired, just  as  the  lover  adorns  himself  and  puts 
his  best  foot  forward,  and  hides  all  that  may  dis- 
concert interest  or  sympathy.  So  that  it  happens 
in  life  that  often  when  we  most  desire  to  be  real,  we 
are  most  unreal. 

What  differentiates  Walt  Whitman  from  all 
other  writers  that  I  know,  is  that  he  tried  to  reveal 
65 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

himself,  and  on  the  whole  contrived  to  do  so  with 
less  reserve  than  any  other  human  being. 

"  I  know  perfectly  well  my  own  egotism,"  he 
wrote ;  "  I  know  my  omnivorous  lines,  and  must  not 
write  any  less."  He  was  not  disconcerted  by  any 
failure  of  art,  or  any  propriety,  or  any  apparent 
discrepancy. 

Do  I  contradict  myself  ? 

Very  well  then,  I  contradict  myself. 

I  am  large,  I  contain  multitudes. 

He  had  no  artistic  conscience,  as  we  say. 

"  Easily  written,  loose-finger'd  chords  —  I  feel 
the  thrum  of  your  climax  and  close." 

In  the  curious  and  interesting  essay  called  "  A 
Backward  Glance  over  Travel's  Roads,"  which  he 
wrote  late  in  life,  surveying  his  work,  he  admits  that 
he  has  not  gained  acceptance,  that  his  book  is  a 
failure,  and  has  incurred  marked  anger  and  con- 
tempt; and  he  good-humoredly  quotes  a  sentence 
from  a  friend's  letter,  written  in  1884,  "  I  find  a 
solid  line  of  enemies  to  you  everywhere."  And  yet, 
he  says,  for  all  that,  and  in  spite  of  everything,  he 
has  had  "  his  say  entirely  his  own  way,  and  put  it 
unerringly  on  record."  It  is  simply  "  a  faithful, 
and  doubtless  self-willed  record,"  he  says. 

66 


Walt  Whitman 

That  then  was  Walt  Whitman's  program,  surely 
in  its  very  scope  and  range  worthy  of  some  amaze- 
ment and  respect!  Because  it  is  not  done  inso- 
lently or  with  any  braggadocio,  in  spite  of  what 
he  calls  "  the  barbaric  yawp."  I  do  not  think  that 
anything  is  more  notable  than  the  good-humor  and 
the  equanimity  of  it  all.  He  is  not  interested  in 
himself  in  a  morbid  or  self-conscious  way;  he  has 
not  the  slightest  wish  to  make  himself  out  to  be 
fine  or  magnificent  or  superior  —  it  is  quite  the 
other  way.  He  is  merely  going  to  try  to  break 
down  the  barriers  between  soul  and  soul,  to  let 
the  river  of  self  ripple  and  welter  and  wash  among 
the  grasses  at  the  feet  of  man.  He  does  not  wish 
you  to  admire  it,  though  he  hopes  you  may  love 
it ;  there  are  to  be  no  excuses  or  pretenses ;  he  does 
not  wish  to  be  seen  at  certain  angles  or  in  subdued 
lights.  He  casts  himself  down  in  his  nakedness, 
and  lets  who  will  observe  him ;  and  all  this  not  be- 
cause he  is  either  hero  or  saint ;  his  proudest  title 
is  to  be  an  average  man,  one  of  the  crowd,  with 
passions,  weaknesses,  uglinesses,  even  deformities. 
He  is  there,  he  is  just  so,  and  you  may  take  it  or 
leave  it ;  but  he  is  not  ashamed  or  sensitive,  nor  in 
any  way  abashed ;  he  smiles  his  frank,  good-natured 
67 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

smile;  and  suddenly  one  perceives  the  greatness 
of  it!  He  is  neither  fanatic  nor  buffoon;  he  is 
not  performing  like  the  boxer  or  wrestler,  nor  is  he 
sitting  mournfully  and  patiently  for  the  sake  of  the 
pence,  like  the  fat  man  at  the  fair;  he  is  merely 
trying  to  say  what  he  thinks  and  feels,  and  if  he 
has  any  aim  at  all,  it  is  to  tempt  others  into  un- 
abashed sincerity.  He  cries  to  man,  "  If  you 
would  only  recognize  yourself  as  you  are,  without 
pretenses  or  excuses,  the  dignity  which  your  sub- 
terfuges are  meant  to  secure  would  be  yours  with- 
out question."  It  is  not  a  question  of  good,  bad, 
or  indifferent.  Every  one  has  a  right  to  be  where 
he  is,  and  there  is  a  reason  for  him  and  a  justifica- 
tion too.  That  is  the  gospel  of  Walt  Whitman; 
it  may  be  a  bad  gospel,  or  an  ugly  one,  or  an  inde- 
corous one;  but  no  one  can  pretend  that  it  is  not 
a  big  one. 


One  immense  and  fruitful  discovery  Walt  Whit- 
man made,  and  yet  one  can  hardly  call  it  a  dis- 
covery; it  is  more  perhaps  an  inspired  doctrine, 
unsupported  by  argument,  wholly  unphilosophical, 
proclaimed  with  a  childlike  loudness  and  confidence, 

68 


Walt  Whitman 

but  yet  probably  true :  the  doctrine,  that  is,  of  the 
indissoluble  union  between  body  and  soul.  Indis- 
soluble, one  calls  it,  and  yet  nothing  is  more  patent 
than  the  fact  that  it  is  a  union  which  is  invariably 
and  inevitably  dissolved  in  death;  while  on  the 
other  hand,  one  sees  in  certain  physical  catastro- 
phies,  such  as  paralysis,  brain-concussion,  senile 
decay,  insanity,  the  soul  apparently  reduced  to  the 
condition  of  a  sleeping  partner,  or  so  far  deranged 
as  to  be  unable  to  express  anything  but  some  one 
dominant  emotion;  or,  more  bewildering  still,  one 
sees  the  moral  sense  seemingly  suspended  by  a 
physical  disorder.  And  yet  for  all  that,  the  doc- 
trine may  be  essentially  and  substantially  true; 
the  vitality  of  the  soul  may  be  bound  up  with  its 
power  of  expressing  itself  in  material  terms.  It 
may  be  that  the  soul-stuff,  which  we  call  life,  has 
an  existence  apart  from  its  material  manifestation, 
and  that  individuality,  as  we  see  it,  may  be  a  mere 
phenomenon  of  the  passage  of  a  force,  like  the 
visibility  of  electricity  under  certain  conditions ; 
indeed  it  seems  more  probable  that  matter  is  a 
function  of  thought  rather  than  thought  a  func- 
tion of  matter.  It  is  likely  enough  that  animals 
have  no  conscious  sense  of  any  division  of  aims, 

69 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

any  antagonism  between  physical  and  mental  de- 
sires ;  but  as  the  human  race  develops,  the  imagina- 
tion, the  sense  of  the  opposition  between  the  rea- 
son and  the  appetite,  begins  to  emerge.  Man 
becomes  aware  that  his  will  and  his  wish  may  not 
coincide ;  and  thus  develops  the  medieval  theory  of 
asceticism,  the  belief  that  the  body  is  essentially 
vile,  and  suggests  base  desires  to  the  mind,  which 
the  mind  has  the  power  of  controlling.  That  con- 
ception fitted  closely  to  the  feudal  theory  of  gov- 
ernment, in  which  the  interests  of  the  ruler  and  the 
subject  did  not  necessarily  coincide;  the  ruler  gov- 
erned with  his  own  interests  in  view,  and  coerced 
his  subjects  if  he  could;  but  the  new  theory  of  gov- 
ernment does  not  separate  the  ruler  from  the  state. 
The  government  of  a  state  with  democratic  insti- 
tutions is  the  will  of  the  people  taking  shape,  and 
the  phenomena  of  rule  are  but  those  of  the  popular 
will  expressing  itself,  the  object  being  that  each 
individual  should  have  his  due  preponderance ;  the 
ultimate  end  being  as  much  individual  liberty  as  is 
consistent  with  harmonious  cooperation. 

That  is  a  rough  analogy  of  the  doctrine  of  Walt 
Whitman;  namely  that  the  individual,  soul  and 
body,  is  a  polity;  and  that  the  true  life  is  to  be 

70 


Walt  Whitman 

found  in  a  harmonious  cooperation  of  body  and 
soul.  The  reason  is  not  at  liberty  to  deride  or  to 
neglect  the  bodily  desires,  even  the  meanest  and 
basest  of  them,  because  every  desire,  whether  of 
soul  or  body,  is  the  expression  of  something  that 
exists  in  the  animating  principle.  Take,  for  ex*- 
ample,  the  case  of  physical  passion.  That,  in  its 
ultimate  analysis,  is  the  instinct  for  propagating 
life,  the  transmission  and  continuance  of  vitality. 
The  reason  must  not  ignore  or  deplore  it,  but  direct 
it  into  the  proper  channels;  it  may  indicate  the 
dangers  that  it  incurs ;  but  merely  to  thwart  it,  to 
regard  it  with  shame  and  horror,  is  to  establish  an 
internecine  warfare.  The  true  function  is  rather 
to  ennoble  the  physical  desire  by  the  just  con- 
currence of  the  soul.  But  the  essence  of  the  situa- 
tion is  cooperation  and  not  coercion ;  and  each  must 
be  ready  to  compromise.  If  the  physical  nature 
will  not  compromise  with  the  reason,  the  disasters 
of  unbridled  passion  follow ;  if  the  reason  will  not 
cooperate  with  the  physical  desire,  the  result  is  a 
sterile  intellectualism,  a  life  of  starved  and  timid 
experience.  It  was  here,  of  course,  that  Walt 
Whitman's  view  gave  offense ;  he  thought  of  civili- 
zation as  a  conventional  system,  cultivating  a  false 
71 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

shame  and  an  ignoble  reserve  about  bodily  proc- 
esses. But  the  vital  truth  of  his  doctrine  lies  in 
the  fact  that  many  of  our  saddest,  because  most 
remediable,  disasters  are  caused  by  a  timid  reti- 
cence about  the  strongest  force  that  animates  the 
world,  the  force  of  reproduction.  Whitman  felt, 
and  truly  felt,  that  reason  and  sentiment  have  out- 
run discretion.  It  may  be  asked,  indeed,  how  this 
terror  of  all  outspokenness  has  developed  in  the 
human  race,  so  that  parents  cannot  bear  to  speak 
to  their  children  about  an  experience  which  they 
will  be  certain  to  make  acquaintance  with  in  some 
far  more  violent  and  base  form.  Does  this  shrink- 
ing delicacy,  this  sacred  reserve,  mean  nothing,  it 
may  be  asked?  Well,  it  may  be  said,  if  this  sensi- 
tiveness is  so  valuable  that  it  must  not  be  required 
to  anticipate  tenderly  and  faithfully  what  will  be 
communicated  in  a  grosser  form,  then  silence  is 
justified,  and  not  otherwise.  But  transfer  this 
reticence  about  a  matter  of  awful  concern  to  some 
other  region  of  morals,  what  should  we  think  of 
the  parent  who  so  feared  to  lessen  the  affection  of 
a  child  by  rebuking  it  for  a  lie  or  a  theft  as  to  let 
it  go  out  into  the  world  ignorant  that  either  was 
reprobated?     Whitman's  argument  would  rather  be 

7^ 


Walt  Whitman 

that  a  parent  should  say  to  a  child,  "  There  is  a 
force  within  you  which  will  to  a  large  extent  deter- 
mine the  happiness  of  your  life ;  it  must  be  guarded 
and  controlled.  You  will  probably  not  be  able  to 
ignore  or  disregard  it,  and  you  must  bring  it  into 
harmonious  cooperation  with  mind  and  reason  and 
duty.  There  is  nothing  that  is  shameful  about  its 
being  there;  indeed,  it  is  the  dominant  force  in 
the  world.  The  shameful  thing  is  to  use  it  shame- 
lessly." Yet  the  attitude  of  parents  too  often  is 
to  treat  the  subject,  not  as  if  it  were  sacred,  but 
as  if  it  were  unmentionable;  so  that  the  very  fact 
of  the  child's  own  origin  would  seem  to  be  an 
essentially  shameful  thing. 

The  Greeks,  it  is  true,  had  an  instinct  for  the 
thought  of  the  vital  interdependence  of  body  and 
soul;  but  they  thought  too  much  of  the  glowing 
manifestation  of  the  health  and  beauty  of  youth, 
and  viewed  the  decay  and  deformity  of  the  human 
frame  too  much  as  a  disgrace  and  an  abasement. 
But  here  again  comes  in  the  largeness  of  Whit- 
man's presentment,  that  whatever  disasters  befall 
the  body,  whether  through  drudgery  or  battle,  dis- 
ease or  sin,  they  are  all  parts  of  a  rich  and 
large  experience,  not  necessarily  interrupting  the 

73 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

cooperation  of  mind  and  matter.  This  is  the 
strongest  proof  of  Whitman's  faith  in  the  essen- 
tial brotherhood  of  man,  that  such  horrors  and 
wretchednesses  do  not  seem  to  him  to  interrupt 
the  design,  or  to  destroy  the  possibility  of  a 
human  sympathy  which  is  instinctive  rather  than 
a  matter  of  devout  effort.  Whitman  is  here  on 
the  side  of  the  very  greatest  and  finest  human  spir- 
its, in  that  he  is  shocked  and  appalled  by  nothing. 
He  does  not  call  it  the  best  of  worlds,  but  it  is  the 
only  world  that  he  knows ;  and  the  glowing  inter- 
est, the  passionate  emotion,  the  vital  rush  and 
current  of  it,  prove  beyond  all  doubt  that  we  are 
in  touch  with  something  very  splendid  and  mag- 
nificent indeed,  and  that  no  misdeed  or  disaster 
forfeits  our  share  in  the  inheritance.  He  is  ut- 
terly at  variance  with  the  hideous  Calvinistic  the- 
ory, that  God  sent  some  of  His  creatures  into  the 
world  for  their  pain  and  ruin.  Whatever  happens 
to  your  body  or  your  soul,  says  Whitman,  it  is 
worth  your  while  to  live  and  to  have  lived.  He 
adopts  no  facile  system  of  compensations  and  off- 
sets. He  rather  protests  with  all  his  might  that, 
however  broken  your  body  or  fatuous  your  mind, 
it  is  a  good  thing  for  you  to  have  taken  a  hand 
74. 


Walt  Whitman 

in  the  affair ;  and  that  the  essence  of  the  whole  sit- 
uation has  not  been  your  success,  your  dignity, 
your  comfortable  obliteration  of  half  your  facul- 
ties, or  on  the  other  hand  your  failure,  your  vile- 
ness,  or  your  despair,  but  that  just  at  the  time 
and  place  at  which  the  phenomenon  called  your- 
self took  place,  that  intricate  creature,  with  its 
bodily  needs  and  desires,  its  joys  of  the  senses,  its 
outlook  on  the  strange  world,  took  shape  and 
made  you  exactly  what  you  are,  and  nothing 
else.  As  he  says  in  one  of  his  finest  apo- 
logues : 

"  Through  birth,  life,  death,  burial,  the  means 
are  provided,  nothing  is  scanted. 

"  Through  angers,  losses,  ambition,  ignorance, 
ennui,  what  you  are  picks  its  way." 

3 

Then  too  Walt  Whitman  claims  to  be  the  poet, 
not  of  the  past  or  even  only  of  the  present,  but 
the  singer  of  the  future.  He  says  in  "  The  Back- 
ward Glance;"  which  I  have  already  quoted,  and 
which  must  be  carefully  read  by  any  one  who 
wishes  to  understand  his  work  —  at  least  in  so 
far  as  he  understood  it  himself, — "  Isolated  ad- 
75 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

vantages  in  anj  rank  or  grace  or  fortune  — the 
direct  or  indirect  threads  of  all  the  poetry  of  the 
past  —  are  in  my  opinion  distasteful  to  the  re- 
publican genius.  .  .  .  Established  poems,  I  know, 
have  the  very  great  advantage  of  chanting  the 
already  performed,  so  full  of  glories,  reminiscences 
dear  to  the  minds  of  men."  And  he  says  too  that, 
"  The  educated  world  seems  to  have  been  grow- 
ing more  and  more  ennuied  for  ages,  leaving  to  our 
time  the  inheritance  of  it  all."  And  he  further 
says :  "  The  ranges  of  heroism  and  loftiness  with 
which  Greek  and  feudal  poets  endow'd  their  god- 
like or  lordly  bom  characters,  I  was  to  endow  the 
democratic  averages  of  America.  I  was  to  show 
that  we,  here  and  to-day,  are  eligible  to  the  grand- 
est and  the  best  —  more  eligible  now  than  any 
times  of  old  were." 

This  is  a  lofty  claim,  boldly  advanced  and  main- 
tained; and  here  I  am  on  uncertain  ground,  be- 
cause I  do  not  suppose  that  I  can  realize  what  the 
democratic  spirit  of  America  really  is.  Granted, 
however,  that  it  is  a  free  and  a  noble  spirit,  I  feel 
a  doubt  as  to  whether  it  is  possible  for  any  nation, 
at  any  time  in  the  world's  history,  really  to  take 
a  new  start.  The  American  nation  is  not  a  new 
76 


Walt  Whitman 

nation ;  it  is  in  a  sense  a  very  old  nation.  It  has 
had  a  perfectly  new  and  magnificent  field  for  its 
energies,  and  it  has  made  a  sweep  of  the  old  con- 
ventions; but  it  cannot  get  rid  of  its  inheritance 
of  temperament ;  and  I  think  that,  so  far  as  I  can 
judge,  it  is  too  anxious  to  emphasize  its  sense  of 
revolt,  its  consciousness  of  newness  of  life.  Whit- 
man himself  would  not  be  so  anxious  to  declare 
the  ennui  of  the  old,  if  he  did  not  feel  himself  in 
a  way  trammeled  by  it.  The  moment  that  a  case 
is  stated  with  any  vehemence,  that  moment  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  speaker  has  antagonists  in  his  eye. 
There  is  a  story  of  Professor  Blackie  at  Edin- 
burgh making  a  tirade  against  the  stuffiness  of  the 
old  English  universities  to  Jowett,  the  incisive 
Master  of  Balliol.  At  the  end,  he  said  generously, 
"  I  hope  you  people  at  Oxford  do  not  think  that 
we  are  your  enemies  up  here  ? "  "  No,"  said 
Jowett  dryly,  "  to  tell  the  truth,  we  don't  think 
about  you  at  all ! "  The  man  who  is  really  mak- 
ing a  new  beginning,  serenely  confident  in  his 
strength,  does  not,  as  Professor  Blackie  did,  con- 
cern himself  with  his  predecessors  at  all.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  the  democratic  spirit  of  America  may  be 
quietly  glorying  in  its  strength,  and  may  be  merely 
77 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

waiting  till  it  suits  it  to  speak.  But  I  do  not 
think  it  can  be  said  to  have  found  full  expression. 
It  seems  to  me  —  I  may  well  be  wrong  —  that  in 
matters  of  culture,  the  American  is  far  more  seri- 
ously bent  on  knowing  what  has  been  done  in  the 
past  even  than  the  Englishman.  The  Englishman 
takes  the  past  for  granted;  he  is  probably  more 
deeply  and  instinctively  penetrated  with  its  tradi- 
tions than  he  knows;  but  ever  since  the  Romantic 
movement  began  in  England,  about  a  century  ago, 
the  general  tendency  is  anarchical  and  anticlassi- 
cal.  Writers  like  Wordsworth,  Browning,  Car- 
lyle,  Ruskin,  had  very  little  deference  about  them. 
They  did  not  even  trouble  to  assert  their  inde- 
pendence; they  said  what  they  thought,  and  as 
they  thought  it.  But  the  spirit  of  American  lit- 
erature does  not  on  the  whole  appear  to  me  to  be 
a  democratic  spirit.  It  has  not,  except  in  the  case 
of  Walt  Whitman  himself,  shown  any  strong  tend- 
ency to  invent  new  forms  or  to  ventilate  new  ideas. 
It  has  not  broken  out  into  crude,  fresh,  immature 
experiments.  It  has  rather  worked  as  the  Romans 
did,  who  anxiously  adopted  and  imitated  Greek 
models,  admiring  the  form  but  not  comprehending 
the  spirit.     A  revolt  in  literary  art,  such  as  the 

78 


Walt  Whitman 

Romantic  movement  in  England,  has  no  time  to 
concern  itself  with  the  old  forms  and  traditions. 
Writers  like  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Shelley,  Byron, 
Walter  Scott,  had  far  too  much  to  say  for  them- 
selves to  care  how  the  old  classical  schools  had 
worked.  They  used  the  past  as  a  quarry,  not  as 
a  model.  But  the  famous  American  writers  have 
not  originated  new  forms,  or  invented  a  different 
use  of  language ;  they  have  widened  and  freshened 
traditions,  they  have  not  thrown  them  overboard. 
Neither,  if  I  interpret  facts  rightly,  have  the 
Americans  developed  a  new  kind  of  aristocracy. 
Whitman's  talk  of  democratic  averages  is  beside 
the  point.  The  process  of  leveling  up  and  leveling 
down  only  produces  low  standards.  What  the 
world  needs,  whether  in  England  or  America,  is  a 
new  sort  of  aristocracy  —  simple,  disinterested, 
bold,  sympathetic,  enthusiastic  men,  of  clear  vision 
and  free  thought.  And  what  the  democracy  needs 
is  not  an  envious  dislike  of  all  prominence  and 
greatness,  but  an  eye  for  all  greatness,  and  an 
admiration  for  all  courage  and  largeness  of  soul. 
England  suspects,  perhaps  erroneously,  that 
America  has  founded  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  and 
influence  and  physical  prowess,  rather  than  an 
79 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

aristocracy  of  simplicity  and  fearlessness.  One 
believes  that  the  competitive,  the  prize-winning 
spirit,  is  even  more  dominant  in  America  than  in 
England.  No  one  doubts  the  fierce  energy  and  the 
aplomb  of  America ;  but  can  it  be  said  that  ideas, 
the  existence  of  which  is  the  ultimate  test  of  na- 
tional vigor,  are  really  more  prevalent  in  America 
than  in  England?  It  all  depends,  of  course,  upon 
whether  one  values  the  Greek  or  the  Roman  ideal 
more  highly,  the  interest,  that  is,  of  life,  or  the 
desire  to  rule  and  prosper.  If  the  aim  of  civiliza- 
tion is  orderliness,  then  the  Roman  aim  is  the 
better;  but  if  the  aim  is  spiritual  animation,  then 
the  Greeks  are  the  winners.  Yet  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, England  has  been  more  fruitful  in  ideas 
than  America,  although  America  is  incomparably 
more  interested  in  education  than  England  is. 

But  it  is  hard  to  balance  these  things.  What 
remains  is  the  fact  that  Walt  Whitman  has  drawn 
a  fine  democratic  ideal.  His  democrat  is  essen- 
tially a  worker,  with  every  sort  of  vigorous  im- 
pulse, living  life  in  an  ecstasy  of  health  and  com- 
radeship, careless  of  money  and  influence  and 
position,  content  to  live  a  simple  life,  finding 
beauty,  and  hope,  and  love,  and  labor,  enough,  in 

80 


Walt  Whitman 

the  spirit  of  the  great  dictum  of  William  Morris, 
that  the  reward  of  labor  is  life — ^not  success  or 
power  or  wealth,  but  the  sense  of  living  fully  and 
freely. 

I  do  not  claim  that  this  spirit  exists  in  England 
yet ;  but  does  it  exist  in  America  ?  What,  in  fact, 
constitutes  the  inspiration  of  the  average  Ameri- 
can; what  does  he  expect  to  find  in  life,  and  to 
make  of  life  ?  Whitman  has  no  doubt  at  all.  But 
in  what  other  American  writer  does  this  ideal  find 
expression  ? 


It  remains  to  say  a  few  words  about  the  artistic 
methods  of  Walt  Whitman.  He  himself  claims  no 
artistic  standard  whatever.  He  says  that  he 
wishes  to  create  an  atmosphere;  and  that  his  one 
aim  has  been  suggestiveness.  "  I  round  and  finish 
little,  if  anything ;  and  could  not  consistently  with 
my  scheme.  The  reader  will  always  have  his  or 
her  part  to  do,  just  as  much  as  I  have  had  mine." 

He   says   that  his  purpose  has  been  "not  to 

carry  out  in  the  approved  style  some  choice  plot 

of    fortune    or    misfortune,    or    fancy,    or    fine 

thoughts,  or  incidents  or  courtesies  —  all  of  which 

81 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

has  been  done  overwhelmingly  and  well,  probably 
never  to  be  excelled  .  .  .  but  to  conform  with  and 
build  on  the  concrete  realities  and  theories  of  the 
universe  furnished  by  science,  and  henceforth  the 
only  irrefragable  basis  for  anything,  verse  in- 
cluded—  to  root  both  influences  in  the  emotional 
and  imaginative  action  of  the  modern  time,  and 
dominate  all  that  precedes  or  opposes  them."  He 
adds,  "  No  one  will  get  at  my  verses  who  insists 
upon  viewing  them  as  a  literary  performance,  or 
attempt  at  such  performance,  or  as  aiming  mainly 
toward  art  or  estheticism." 

It  is,  of  course,  quite  true  that  no  writer  is 
bound  by  traditions  of  art,  and  there  is  no  one 
who  need  consider  how  the  thing  has  been  done 
before,  or  follow  a  prescribed  code.  But  for  all 
that,  art  is  not  a  thing  of  rules  made  and  enforced 
by  critics.  All  that  critics  can  do  is  to  determine 
what  the  laws  of  art  are ;  because  art  has  laws  un- 
derlying it  which  are  as  certain  as  the  laws  of 
gravity,  even  if  they  are  not  known.  The  more  per- 
manent art  is,  the  more  it  conforms  to  these  laws ; 
because  the  fact  is  that  there  is  a  vital  impulse  in 
the  human  mind  towards  the  expression  of  beauty, 
and  a  vital  discrimination  too  as  to  the  form  and 


Walt  Whitman 

method  of  that  expression.  Architecture,  for  In- 
stance, and  music,  are  alike  based  upon  instinctive 
preferences  in  human  beings,  the  one  for  geomet- 
rical form,  the  others  for  the  combination  of  vibra- 
tions. It  is  a  law  of  music,  for  instance,  that 
the  human  being  prefers  an  octave  in  absolute 
unison,  and  not  an  octave  of  which  one  note  is  a 
semitone  flat.  That  is  not  a  rule  invented  by 
critics ;  it  is  a  law  of  human  perception  and  pref- 
erence. Similarly  there  is  undoubtedly  a  law  which 
determines  human  preferences  in  poetry,  though  a 
far  more  complicated  law,  and  not  yet  analyzed. 
The  new  poet  is  not  a  man  who  breaks  the  law,  but 
who  discovers  a  real  extension  of  it. 

The  question  then,  roughly,  is  this:  Whitman 
chose  to  express  himself  in  a  species  of  poetry, 
based  roughly  upon  Hebrew  poetry,  such,  as  we 
have  in  the  Psalms  and  Prophets.  If  this  is  a  true 
expansion  of  the  esthetic  law  of  poetry,  then  it  is  a 
success ;  if  it  is  not  a  true  expansion,  but  only  a 
wilful  variation,  not  consonant  with  the  law,  it  is  a 
failure. 

Now  there  are  many  effects  in  Whitman  which 
are,  I  believe,  inconsistent  with  the  poetical  law. 
Not  to  multiply  instances,  his  grotesque  word- 
83 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

inventions  — "  Me  imperturbe !  "  "  No  dainty 
dolce  affettuoso  I,"  "  the  drape  of  the  day  " — 
his  use  of  Greek  and  Latin  and  French  terms,  not 
correctly  used  and  not  even  rightly  spelt,  his  end- 
less iterations,  lists,  catalogues,  categories,  things 
not  clearly  visualized  or  even  remotely  perceived, 
but  swept  relentlessly  in,  like  the  debris  of  some 
storeroom,  all  these  are  ugly  mannerisms  which 
simply  blur  and  encumber  the  pages.  The  ques- 
tion is  not  whether  they  offend  a  critical  and  cul- 
tured mind,  but  whether  they  produce  an  inspiring 
effect  upon  any  kind  of  mind. 

Then  too  his  form  constantly  collapses,  as 
though  he  had  no  fixed  scheme  in  his  mind.  There 
are  many  poems  which  begin  with  an  ample  sweep, 
and  suddenly  crumble  to  pieces,  as  though  he  were 
merely  tired  of  them. 

Then  again  there  seem  to  me  to  be  some  simply 
coarse,  obscene,  unpleasant  passages,  not  of  relent- 
less realism  but  of  dull  inquisitiveness.  They 
do  not  attract  or  impress ;  they  do  not  provide  a 
contrast  or  an  emphasis.  They  simply  lie,  like 
piles  of  filth,  in  rooms  designed  for  human  habita- 
tion. If  it  is  argued  that  art  may  use  any  materi- 
als, I  can  only  fall  back  upon  my  belief  that  such 

84 


Walt  Whitman 

passages  are  as  instinctively  repulsive  to  the  artis- 
tic sense  as  strong-smelling  cheeses  stacked  in  a 
library !  There  is  no  moral  or  ethical  law  against 
such  a  practice ;  but  the  esthetic  conscience  of  hu- 
manity instinctively  condemns  it.  When  I  exam- 
ine the  literature  which  has  inspired  and  attracted 
the  minds  of  humanity,  whether  trained  or  un- 
trained, I  find  that  they  avoid  this  hideous  intru- 
sion of  nastiness ;  and  I  am  inclined  to  infer  that 
writers  who  introduce  such  episodes,  and  readers 
who  like  them,  have  some  other  impulse  in  view, 
which  is  neither  the  sense  of  beauty  nor  the  per- 
ception of  art.  But  if  Whitman,  or  any  one  else, 
can  convert  the  world  to  call  this  art,  and  to  en j  oy 
it  as  art,  then  he  will  prove  that  he  understands 
the  law  of  preference  better  than  I  do. 

But  when  all  this  has  been  said  and  conceded, 
there  yet  remain  countless  passages  of  true  and 
vital  beauty,  exquisite  phrases,  haunting  pictures, 
glimpses  of  perfect  loveliness.  His  poems  of  com- 
radeship and  the  open  air,  his  pictures  of  family 
life,  have  often  a  magical  thrill  of  passion,  leaving 
one  rapturous  and  unsatisfied,  believing  in  the  se- 
crets behind  the  world,  and  hoping  for  a  touch  of 
like  experience. 

85 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

If  I  may  take  one  poem  as  typical  of  the  best 
that  is  in  Whitman  —  and  what  a  splendid  best! 
' —  it  shall  be  "  Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rock- 
ing," from  the  book  called  "  Sea-drift."  I  declare 
that  I  can  never  read  this  poem  without  profound 
emotion;  it  is  here  that  he  fully  justifies  his  claim 
to  atmosphere  and  suggestiveness ;  the  nesting 
birds,  the  sea's  edge,  with  its  "  liquid  rims  and  wet 
sands  " —  what  a  magical  phrase !  —  the  angry 
moan  of  the  breakers  under  the  yellow,  drooping 
moon,  the  boy  with  his  feet  in  the  water,  and  the 
wind  in  his  hair  —  this  is  all  beyond  criticism. 

Demon  or  bird!  (said  the  boy's  soul) 
Is  it  indeed  toward  your  mate  you  sing?  or  is  it  mostly 

to  me? 
For  I,  that  was  a  child,  my  tongue's  use  sleeping,  now 

I  have  heard  you 
Now  in  a  moment  I  know  what  I  am  for, —  I  awake. 
And  already  a  thousand  singers,  a  thousand  songs, 

clearer,  louder  and  more  sorrowful  than  yours, 
A  thousand  warbling  echoes  have  started  to  life  within 

me,  never  to  die. 

And  then  he  cries  to  the  waves  to  tell  him  what 
they  have  been  whispering  all  the  time. 

Whereto  answering,  the  sea, 
Delaying  not,  hurrying  not, 
86 


Walt  Whitman 

Whisper'd  me  through  the  night  and  very  plainly  be- 
fore day-break^ 
Lisp*d  to  me  the  low  and  delicious  word  death. 

This  theme,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  worked  out 
more  fully  in  the  Lincoln  poem,  "  When  Lilacs 
Last  in  the  Dooryard  Bloom'd,"  with  the  "  Song 
of  Death,"  too  long,  alas,  to  quote  here  —  it 
would  be  delightful  even  to  inscribe  the  words  — 
which  seems  to  me  for  splendor  of  language,  sweet- 
ness of  rhythm,  and  stateliness  of  cadence  —  to 
say  nothing  of  the  magnificence  of  the  thought  — 
to  be  incontestably  among  the  very  greatest  po- 
ems of  the  world. 

If  Whitman  could  always  have  written  so! 
Then  he  need  hardly  have  said  that  the  strongest 
and  sweetest  songs  remained  to  be  sung;  but  this, 
and  many  other  gems  of  poetry,  lie  in  radiant 
fragments  among  the  turbid  and  weltering  rush  of 
his  strange  verse ;  and  thus  one  sees  that  if  there  is 
indeed  a  law  of  art,  it  lies  close  to  the  instinct  of 
suppression  and  omission.  One  may  think  any- 
thing ;  one  may  say  most  things ;  but  if  one  means 
to  sway  the  human  heart  by  that  one  particular 
gift  of  words,  ordered  and  melodiously  intertwined, 
one  must  heed  what  experience  tells  the  aspirant  — 
87 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

that  no  fervor  of  thought,  or  exuberance  of  utter- 
ance, can  make  up  for  the  harmony  of  the  firmly 
touched  lyre,  and  the  music  of  the  unuttered  word. 


88 


CHARM 


CHARM 

THERE  is  a  little  village  here  near  Cambridge 
the  homely,  summer-sounding  name  of  which 
is  Haslingfield.  It  is  a  straggling  hamlet  of  white- 
walled,  straw-thatched  cottages,  among  orchards 
and  old  elms,  full  of  closes  of  meadow-grass,  and 
farmsteads  with  ricks  and  big-timbered  bams.  It 
has  a  solid,  upstanding  Tudor  church,  with  rather 
a  grand  tower,  and  four  solid  corner  turrets ;  and 
it  has,  too,  its  little  bit  of  history  in  the  manor- 
house,  of  which  only  one  high-shouldered  wing  re- 
mains, with  tall  brick  chimneys.  It  stands  up 
above  some  mellow  old  walls,  a  big  dove-cote,  and 
a  row  of  ancient  fish-ponds.  Here  Queen  Eliza- 
beth once  spent  a  night  upon  the  wing.  Close 
behind  the  village,  a  low  wold,  bare  and  calm,  with 
a  belt  or  two  of  trees,  runs  steeply  up. 

The  simplest  and  quietest  place  imaginable,  with 
a  simple  and  remote  life,  hardly  aware  of  itself, 
91 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

flowing  tranquilly  through  it ;  yet  this  little  village, 
by  some  felicity  of  grouping  and  gathering,  has 
the  rare  and  incomparable  gift  of  charm.  I  can- 
not analyze  it,  I  cannot  explain  it,  yet  at  all  times 
and  in  all  lights,  whether  its  orchards  are  full  of 
bloom  and  scent,  and  the  cuckoo  flutes  from  the 
holt  down  the  soft  breeze,  or  in  the  bare  and  leaf- 
less winter,  when  the  pale  sunset  glows  beyond  the 
wold  among  the  rifted  cloud-banks,  it  has  the  won- 
derful appeal  of  beauty,  a  quality  which  cannot  be 
schemed  for  or  designed,  but  which  a  very  little 
mishandling  can  sweep  away.  The  whole  place 
has  grown  up  out  of  common  use,  trees  planted 
for  shelter,  orchards  set  for  fruit,  houses  built  for 
convenience.  Only  in  the  church  and  the  manor 
is  there  any  care  for  seemliness  and  stateliness. 
There  are  a  dozen  villages  round  about  it  which 
have  sprung  from  the  same  needs,  the  same  his- 
tory; and  yet  these  have  missed  the  unconsidered 
charm  of  Haslingfield,  which  man  did  not  devise, 
nor  does  nature  inevitably  bring,  but  which  is 
instantly  recognizable  and  strangely  aff^ecting. 

Such  charm  seems  to  arise  partly  out  of  a  subtle 
orderliness  and  a  simple  appropriateness,  and 
partly  from  a  blending  of  delicate  and  pathetic 

92 


Charm 

elements  In  a  certain  unascertained  proportion.  It 
seems  to  touch  unknown  memories  into  life,  and  to 
give  a  hint  of  the  working  of  some  half-whimsical, 
half-tenderly  concerned  spirit,  brooding  over  its 
work,  adding  a  touch  of  form  here  and  a  dash  of 
color  there,  and  pleased  to  see,  when  all  is  done, 
that  it  is  good. 

If  one  looks  closely  at  life,  one  sees  the  same 
quality  in  humanity,  in  men  and  women,  in  books 
and  pictures,  and  yet  one  cannot  tell  what  goes 
to  the  making  of  it.  It  seems  to  be  a  thing  which 
no  energy  or  design  can  capture,  but  which  alights 
here  and  there,  blowing  like  the  wind  at  will.  It 
is  not  force  or  originality  or  inventiveness ;  very 
often  it  is  strangely  lacking  in  any  masterful  qual- 
ity at  all;  but  it  has  always  just  the  same  wistful 
appeal,  which  makes  one  desire  to  understand  it, 
to  take  possession  of  it,  to  serve  it,  to  win  its 
favor.  It  is  as  when  the  child  in  Francis  Thomp- 
son's poem  seems  to  say,  "  I  hire  you  for  nothing." 
That  is  exactly  it:  there  is  nothing  offered  or 
bestowed,  but  one  is  at  once  magically  bound  to 
serve  it  for  love  and  delight.  There  is  nothing 
that  one  can  expect  to  get  from  it,  and  yet  it  goes 
very  far  down  into  the  soul ;  it  is  behind  the  mad- 

93 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

dening  desire  which  certain  faces,  hands,  voices, 
smiles  excite  —  the  desire  to  possess,  to  claim,  to 
know  even  that  no  one  else  can  possess  or  claim 
them,  which  lies  at  the  root  of  half  the  jealous 
tragedies  of  life. 

Some  personalities  have  charm  in  a  marvelous 
degree,  and  if,  as  one  looks  into  the  old  records  of 
life,  one  discovers  figures  that  seem  to  have  laid 
an  inexplicable  hold  on  their  circles,  and  to  have 
passed  through  life  in  a  tempest  of  applause  and 
admiration,  one  may  be  sure  that  charm  has  been 
the  secret. 

Take  the  case  of  Arthur  Hallam,  the  inspirer  of 
"  In  Memoriam."  I  remember  hearing  Mr.  Glad- 
stone say,  with  kindled  eye  and  emphatic  gesture, 
that  Arthur  Hallam  was  the  most  perfect  being 
physically,  morally,  and  intellectually  that  he  had 
ever  seen  or  hoped  to  see.  He  said,  I  remember, 
with  a  smile :  "  The  story  of  Milnes  Gaskell's 
friendship  with  Hallam  was  curious.  You  must 
know  that  people  fell  in  love  very  easily  in  those 

days;  there  was  a  Miss  E of  whom  Hallam 

was  enamored,  and  Milnes  Gaskell  abandoned  his 
own  addresses  to  her  in  favor  of  Hallam,  in  order 
to  gain  his  friendship." 

94 


Charm 

Yet  the  portrait  of  Hallam  which  hangs  in  the 
provost's  house  at  Eton  represents  a  rosy,  solid, 
rather  heavy-featured  young  man,  with  a  flushed 
face, —  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  this  was  caused 
by  overwork, —  who  looks  more  like  a  young  coun- 
try bumpkin  on  the  opera-boufFe  stage  than  an 
intellectual  archangel. 

Odder  still,  the  letters,  poems,  and  remains  of 
Hallam  throw  no  light  on  the  hypnotic  effect  he 
produced;  they  are  turgid,  elaborate,  and  wholly 
uninteresting;  nor  does  he  seem  to  have  been  en- 
tirely amiable.  Lord  Dudley  told  Francis  Hare 
that  he  had  dined  with  Henry  Hallam,  the  his- 
torian, who  was  Arthur  Hallam's  father,  in  the 
company  of  the  son,  in  Italy,  adding,  "  It  did  my 
heart  good  to  sit  by  and  hear  how  the  son  snubbed 
the  father,  remembering  how  often  the  father  had 
unmercifully  snubbed  me." 

There  is  a  hint  of  beauty  in  the  dark  eyes  and 
the  down-dropped  curve  of  the  mobile  lip  in  the 
portrait,  and  one  need  not  quote  "  In  Memoriam  " 
to  prove  how  utterly  the  charm  of  Hallam  subju- 
gated the  Tennyson  circle.  Wit,  swiftness  of  in- 
sight, beauty,  lovableness  —  all  seem  to  have  been 
there;  and  it  remains  that  Arthur  Hallam  was 
95 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

worshiped  and  adored  by  his  contemporaries  with 
a  fierce  jealousy  of  devotion.  Nothing  but  the 
presence  of  an  overmastering  charm  can  explain 
this  conspiracy  of  praise ;  and  perhaps  there  is  no 
better  proof  of  it  than  that  his  friends  could  detect 
genius  in  letters  and  poems  which  seem  alike  desti- 
tute of  promise  and  performance. 

There  is  another  figure  of  earlier  date  who  seems 
to  have  had  the  same  magnetic  gift  in  an  even  more 
preeminent  degree.  There  is  a  portrait  by  Law- 
rence of  Lord  Melbourne  that  certainly  gives  a 
hint,  and  more  than  a  hint,  of  the  extraordinary 
charm  which  enveloped  him;  the  thick,  wavy  hair, 
the  fine  nose,  the  full,  but  firmly  molded,  lips,  are 
attractive  enough.  But  the  large,  dark  eyes  under 
strongly  marked  eyebrows,  which  are  at  once  pa- 
thetic, passionate,  ironical,  and  mournful,  evoke 
a  singular  emotion.  Every  gift  that  men  hold  to 
be  advantageous  was  showered  upon  Melbourne. 
He  was  well  bom,  wealthy,  able;  he  was  full  of 
humor,  quick  to  grasp  a  subject,  an  omnivorous 
reader  and  student,  a  famous  sportsman.  He  won 
the  devotion  of  both  men  and  women.  His  mar- 
riage with  the  lovely  and  brilliant  Lady  Caroline 
Ponsonby,  whose  heart  was  broken  and  mind  shat- 
96 


Charm 

tered  by  her  hopeless  passion  for  Byron,  showed 
how  he  could  win  hearts.  There  is  no  figure  of 
all  that  period  of  whom  one  would  rather  possess 
a  personal  memoir.  Yet  despite  all  his  fame  and 
political  prestige,  he  was  an  unhappy,  dissatisfied 
man,  who  tasted  every  experience  and  joy  of  life, 
and  found  that  there  was  nothing  in  it. 

The  dicta  of  his  that  are  preserved  vibrate  be- 
tween cynicism,  shrewdness,  wisdom,  and  tender- 
ness. ''  Stop  a  bit,"  he  said,  as  the  cabinet  went 
down-stairs  after  a  dinner  to  discuss  the  corn  laws. 
"  Is  it  to  lower  the  price  of  bread  or  is  n't  it  ?  It 
does  n't  much  matter  which,  but  we  must  all  say 
the  same  thing."  Yet,  after  all,  it  is  the  letters 
and  diaries  of  Queen  Victoria  that  reveal  the  true 
secret  of  Melbourne's  charm.  His  relation  to  his 
girl  sovereign  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  things 
in  latter-day  history.  Melbourne  loved  her  half 
paternally,  half  chivalrously,  while  it  is  evident 
that  the  queen's  affection  for  her  gallant  and  at- 
tractive premier  was  of  a  quality  which  escaped 
her  own  perception.  He  humored  her,  advised 
her,  watched  over  her ;  in  return,  she  idolized  him, 
noted  down  his  smallest  sayings,  permitted  him  to 
behave  and  talk  just  as  he  would.  She  lovingly 
97 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

records  his  little  ways  and  fancies  —  how  he  fell 
asleep  after  dinner,  how  he  always  took  two  apples, 
and  hid  one  in  his  lap  while  he  ate  the  other. 

"  I  asked  him  if  he  meant  to  eat  it.  He  thought 
not,  and  said,  '  But  I  like  to  have  the  power  of 
doing  so.'  I  observed,  had  n't  he  just  as  well  the 
power  of  doing  so  when  the  apples  were  in  the  dish 
on  the  table.?  He  laughed  and  said,  '  Not  the  full 
power.' " 

Melbourne  was  full  of  prejudices  and  whims  and 
hatreds,  but  his  charity  was  boundless,  and  he 
always  had  a  good  word  for  an  enemy.  He  ex- 
cused the  career  of  Henry  VIII  to  the  queen  by 
saying,  "  You  see,  those  women  bothered  him  so." 
And  when  he  was  superseded  by  Peel,  he  combated 
the  queen's  dislike  of  her  new  premier,  and  did  his 
best  to  put  Peel  in  a  favorable  light.  When  Peel 
made  his  first  appearance  at  Windsor,  shy  and 
awkward,  and  holding  himself  like  a  dancing-mas- 
ter, it  was  Melbourne  who  broke  the  awkward 
pause  by  going  up  to  Peel,  and  saying  in  an  under- 
tone, "  For  God's  sake,  go  and  talk  to  the  queen !  " 
When  I  was  privileged  to  work  through  all  Mel- 
bourne's letters  to  the  queen,  so  carefully  preserved 
and  magnificently  bound,  I  was  greatly  touched  by 
98 


Charm 

the  sweetness  and  tenderness  of  them,  the  gentle 
ironical  flavor,  the  delicate  freedom,  and  the  little 
presents  and  remembrances  they  exchanged  up  to 
the  end. 

Melbourne  can  hardly  be  called  a  very  great 
man, —  he  had  not  the  purpose  or  tenacity  for  that, 
and  he  thought  both  too  contemptuously  and  too 
indulgently  of  human  nature, —  but  I  know  of  no 
historical  figure  who  is  more  wholly  transfused  and 
penetrated  by  the  aroma  of  charm.  Everything 
that  he  did  and  said  had  some  distinction  and  un- 
usualness:  perceptive  observation,  ripe  wisdom, 
and,  with  it  all,  the  petulant  attractiveness  of  the 
spoiled  and  engaging  child.  And  yet  even  so,  one 
is  baffled,  because  it  is  not  the  profundity  or  the 
gravity  of  what  he  said  that  impresses ;  it  is  rather 
the  delicate  and  fantastic  turn  he  gave  to  a  thought 
or  a  phrase  that  makes  his  simplest  deductions 
from  life,  his  most  sensible  bits  of  counsel,  appear 
to  have  something  fresh  and  interesting  about 
them,  though  prudent  men  have  said  much  the  same 
before,  and  said  it  heavily  and  solemnly. 

Not  that  charm  need  be  whimsical  and  freakish, 
though  it  is  perhaps  most  beautiful  when  there  is 
something  of  the  child  about  it,  something  naive 
99 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

and  unconventional.  There  are  men,  of  whom  I 
think  that  Cardinal  Newman  was  preeminently  one, 
who  seem  to  have  had  the  appeal  of  a  pathetic  sort 
of  beauty  and  even  helplessness.  Newman  seems 
to  have  always  been  surprised  to  find  himself  so 
interesting  to  others,  and  perhaps  rather  over- 
shadowed by  the  responsibility  of  it.  He  was 
romantically  affectionate,  and  the  tears  came  very 
easily  at  the  call  of  emotion.  Such  incidents  as 
that  when  Newman  said  good-by  to  his  bare  room 
at  Littlemore,  and  kissed  the  doorposts  and  the 
bed  in  a  passion  of  grief,  show  what  his  intensity 
of  feeling  might  be. 

It  is  not  as  a  rule  the  calm.and  controlled  people 
who  have  this  attractiveness  for  others ;  it  is  rather 
those  who  unite  with  an  enchanting  kind  of  play- 
fulness an  instinct  to  confide  in  and  to  depend  upon 
protective  affection.  Very  probably  there  is  some 
deep-seated  sexual  impulse  involved,  however  re- 
motely and  unconsciously,  in  this  species  of  charm. 
It  is  the  appeal  of  the  child  that  exults  in  happi- 
ness, claims  it  as  a  right,  uses  it  with  a  pretty  petu- 
lance,—  like  the  feigned  enmity  of  the  kitten  and 
the  puppy, —  and  when  it  is  clouded  over,  requires 
tearfully  that  it  shall  be  restored.  That  may  seem 
100 


Charm 

an  undignified  comparison  for  a  prince  of  the 
church.  But  Newman  was  artist  first,  and  theo- 
logian a  long  way  afterward;  he  needed  comfort 
and  approval  and  even  applause;  and  he  evoked, 
together  with  love  and  admiration,  the  compassion 
and  protective  chivalry  of  his  friends.  His  writ- 
ings have  little  logical  or  intellectual  force;  their 
strength  is  in  their  ineffable  and  fragrant  charm, 
their  ordered  grace,  their  infinite  pathos. 

The  Greek  word  for  this  subtle  kind  of  beauty 
is  X^jO'C,  and  the  Greeks  are  worth  hearing  on  the 
subject,  because  they,  of  all  the  nations  that  ever 
lived,  were  penetrated  by  it,  valued  it,  looked  out 
for  it,  worshiped  it.  The  word  itself  has  suff^ered, 
as  all  large  words  are  apt  to  suffer,  when  they  are 
transferred  to  another  language,  because  the  big, 
ultimate  words  of  every  tongue  connote  a  number 
of  ideas  which  cannot  be  exactly  rendered  by  a 
single  word  in  another  language.  Let  us  be  mildly 
philological  for  a  moment,  and  realize  that  the 
word  X^^P^^  in  Greek  is  the  substantive  of  which 
the  verb  is  ycdpo)^  to  rejoice.  We  translate  the 
word  X^P^*^  by  the  English  word  "  grace,"  which 
means,  apart  from  its  theological  sense,  a  rich 
endowment  of  charm  and  beauty,  a  thing  which  is 
101 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

essentially  a  gift,  and  which  cannot  be  captured  by 
taking  thought.  When  we  say  that  a  thing  is 
done  with  a  perfect  grace,  we  mean  that  it  seems 
entirely  delightful,  appropriate,  seemly,  and  beau- 
tiful. It  pleases  every  sense;  it  is  done  just  as  it 
should  be  done,  easily,  courteously,  gently,  pleas- 
antly, with  a  confidence  which  is  yet  modest,  and 
with  a  Tightness  that  has  nothing  rigid  or  unami- 
able  about  it.  To  see  a  thing  so  done,  whatever 
it  may  be,  leaves  us  with  an  envious  desire  that  we 
might  do  the  thing  in  the  same  way.  It  seems 
easy  and  effortless,  and  the  one  thing  worth  doing ; 
and  this  is  where  the  moral  appeal  of  beauty  lies, 
in  the  contagious  sort  of  example  that  it  sets. 
But  when  we  clumsily  translate  the  word  by 
"  grace,"  we  lose  the  root  idea  of  the  word,  which 
has  a  certain  joy  fulness  about  it.  A  thing  done 
with  X^P^'*  is  done  as  a  pleasure,  naturally,  eagerly, 
out  of  the  heart's  abundance;  and  that  is  the 
appeal  of  things  so  done  to  the  ordinary  mind, 
that  they  seem  to  well  up  out  of  a  beautiful  and 
happy  nature,  as  the  clear  spring  rises  from  the 
sandy  floor  of  the  pool.  The  act  is  done,  or  the 
word  spoken,  out  of  a  tranquil  fund  of  joy,  not 
as  a  matter  of  duty,  or  in  reluctant  obedience  to  a 
102 


Charm 

principle,  but  because  the  thing,  whatever  it  is,  is 
the  joyful  and  beautiful  thing  to  do. 

And  so  the  word  became  the  fundamental  idea 
of  the  Christian  life:  the  grace  of  God  was  the 
power  that  floods  the  whole  of  the  earlier  teaching 
of  the  gospel,  before  the  conflict  with  the  ungra- 
cious and  suspicious  world  began  —  the  serene, 
uncalculating  life,  lived  simply  and  purely,  not 
from  any  grim  principle  of  asceticism,  but  because 
it  was  beautiful  to  live  so.  It  stood  for  the  joy 
of  life,  as  opposed  to  its  cares  and  anxieties  and 
ambitions;  it  was  beautiful  to  share  happiness,  to 
give  things  away,  to  live  in  love,  to  find  joy  in  the 
fresh  mintage  of  the  earth,  the  flowers,  the  crea- 
tures, the  children,  before  they  were  clouded  and 
stained  by  the  strife  and  greed  and  enmity  of  the 
world.  The  exquisite  quality  of  the  first  soft 
touches  of  the  gospel  story  comes  from  the  fact 
that  it  all  rose  out  of  a  heart  of  joy,  an  overflowing 
certainty  of  the  true  values  of  life,  a  determination 
to  fight  the  uglier  side  of  life  by  opposing  to  it  a 
simplicity  and  a  sweetness  that  claimed  nothing, 
and  exacted  nothing  but  a  right  to  the  purest  sort 
of  happiness  —  the  happiness  of  a  loving  circle 
of  friends,  where  the  sacrifice  of  personal  desires  is 
103 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  easiest  and  most  natural  thing  in  the  world, 
because  such  sacrifice  is  both  the  best  reward  and 
the  highest  delight  of  love.  It  was  here  that  the 
strength  of  primitive  Christianity  lay,  that  it 
seemed  the  possession  of  a  joyful  secret  that 
turned  all  common  things,  and  even  sorrow  and 
suffering,  to  gold.  If  a  man  could  rejoice  in 
tribulation,  he  was  on  his  way  to  be  invulnerable. 

It  is  not  a  very  happy  business  to  trace  the 
decay  of  a  great  and  noble  idea ;  but  one  can  catch 
a  glimpse  of  the  perversion  of  "  grace  "  in  the 
hands  of  our  Puritan  ancestors,  when  it  became  a 
combative  thing,  which  instead  of  winning  the  ene- 
mies of  the  Lord  by  its  patient  sweetness,  put  an 
edge  on  the  sword  of  holiness,  and  enabled  the 
stanch  Christian  to  hew  the  Amalekites  hip  and 
thigh ;  so  that  the  word,  which  had  stood  for  a  per- 
fectly peaceful  and  attractive  charm,  became  the 
symbol  of  righteous  persecution,  and  flowered  in 
cries  of  anguish  and  spilled  blood. 

We  shall  take  a  long  time  before  we  can  crawl 
out  of  the  shadow  of  that  dark  inheritance;  but 
there  are  signs  in  the  world  of  an  awakening 
brotherliness ;  and  perhaps  we  may  some  day  come 
back  to  the  old  truth,  so  long  mishandled,  that  the 
104 


Charm 

essence  of  all  religion  is  a  spirit  of  beauty  and  of 
joy,  bent  on  giving  rather  than  receiving;  and  so 
at  last  we  may  reach  the  perception  that  the 
fruitful  strength  of  morality  lies  not  in  its  terror, 
its  prohibitions,  its  coercions,  but  in  its  good-will, 
its  tolerance,  its  dislike  of  rebuke  and  censure,  its 
rapturous  acceptance  of  all  generous  and  chival- 
rous and  noble  ways  of  living. 

And  thus,  then,  I  mean  by  charm  not  a  mere 
superficial  gracefulness  which  can  be  learned,  as 
good  manners  are  learned,  through  a  certain  code 
of  behavior,  but  a  thing  which  is  the  flower  and 
outward  sign  of  a  beautiful  attitude  to  life;  an 
eagerness  to  welcome  everything  which  is  fine  and 
fresh  and  unstained;  that  turns  away  the  glance 
from  things  unlovely  and  violent  and  greedy  not  in 
a  disapproving  or  a  self-righteous  spirit,  because 
it  is  respectable  to  be  shocked,  but  in  a  sense  of 
shame  and  disgrace  that  such  cruel  and  covetous 
and  unclean  things  should  be.  If  one  takes  a 
figure  like  that  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  who  for  all 
the  superstition  and  fanaticism  with  which  the 
record  is  intermingled,  showed  a  real  reflection  and 
restoration  of  the  old  Christian  joy  of  life,  we 
shall  see  that  he  had  firm  hold  of  the  secret.  St. 
105 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Francis's  love  of  nature,  of  animals,  of  flowers,  of 
children,  his  way  of  breaking  into  song  about  the 
pleasant  things  of  earth,  his  praise  of  "  our  sister 
the  Water,  because  she  is  very  serviceable  to  us 
and  humble  and  clean,"  show  the  outrush  of  an 
overpowering  joy.  He  had  the  courage  to  do  what 
very  few  men  and  women  ever  dare  to  do,  and  that 
is  to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  property  and  its  com- 
plications ;  but  even  so,  the  old  legend  distorts  some 
of  this  into  a  priggish  desire  to  set  a  good  ex- 
ample, to  warn  and  rebuke  and  improve  the  occa- 
sion. But  St.  Francis's  asceticism  is  the  only  kind 
of  asceticism  that  has  any  charm,  the  self-denial, 
namely,  that  springs  from  a  sense  of  enjoyment, 
and  is  practised  from  a  feeling  of  its  beauty,  and 
not  as  a  matter  of  timid  and  anxious  calculation. 
It  is  true  that  St.  Francis  was  haunted  by  the 
medieval  nightmare  of  the  essential  vileness  of  the 
body,  and  spurred  it  too  hard.  But  apart  from 
this,  one  recognizes  in  him  a  poet,  and  a  man  of 
ineffable  charm,  who  found  the  cempany  of  sinners 
at  least  as  attractive  as  the  company  of  saints, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  the  sinner  is  often 
enough  well  meaning  and  humble,  and  is  spared  at 
least  the  ugliness  of  respectable  self-righteousness, 
106 


Charm 

which  is  of  all  things  most  destructive  of  the  sense 
of  proportion,  and  most  divorced  from  natural 
joy.  St.  Francis  took  human  nature  as  he  found 
it,  and  recognized  that  failure  has  a  beauty  which 
is  denied  to  success,  for  the  simple  reason  that  con- 
scious failure  makes  a  man  both  grateful  and 
affectionate,  while  success  too  often  makes  him  cold 
and  hard. 

And  there  is  thus  a  wonderful  fragrance  about 
all  that  St.  Francis  did  and  said,  though  he  must 
have  been  sorely  tried  by  his  stupid  and  pompous 
followers,  who  constantly  misunderstood  and  mis- 
represented him,  and  dragged  into  the  light  what 
was  meant  to  be  the  inner  secret  of  his  soul. 
There  are  few  figures  in  the  roll  of  saints  so  pro- 
foundly beautiful  and  touching  as  that  of  St.  Fran- 
cis, because  he  had  in  a  preeminent  degree  that 
childlike  freshness  and  trustfulness  which  is  the 
secret  of  all  charm. 

Charm  is  of  course  not  the  same  thing  as  beauty, 
but  only  a  subdivision  of  it.  There  are  many 
things  in  nature  and  in  art,  from  the  Matterhorn 
to  "  Samson  Agonistes,"  that  have  no  charm,  but 
that  appeal  to  a  different  range  of  emotions,  the 
sublime,  the  majestic,  the  awe-inspiring,  things  in 
107 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  presence  of  which  we  are  hardly  at  ease;  but 
charm  is  essentially  a  comfortable  quality,  some- 
thing that  one  gathers  to  one's  heart,  and  if  there 
is  a  mystery  about  it,  as  there  is  about  all  beauti- 
ful things,  it  is  not  a  mystery  of  which  one  would 
be  afraid  to  know  the  secret.  Charm  is  the  quality 
which  makes  one  desire  to  linger  upon  one's  pil- 
grimage, that  cries  to  the  soul  to  halt,  to  rest,  to 
be  content.  It  is  intimate,  reassuring,  and  ap- 
pealing ;  and  the  shadow  of  it  is  the  gentle  pathos, 
which  is  in  itself  half  a  luxury  of  sadness,  in  the 
thought  that  sweet  things  must  have  an  end.  As 
Herrick  wrote  to  the  daffodils : 

Stay,  stay 
Until  the  hasting  day 

Has  run 

But  to  the  evensong; 
And,  having  prayed  together,  we 

Will  go  with  you  along. 

We  have  short  time  to  stay,  as  you, 

We  have  as  short  a  spring; 
As  quick  a  growth  to  meet  decay 

As  you,  or  anything. 

In  such  a  mood  as  that  there  is  no  sense  of  ter- 
ror or  despair  at  the  quick-coming  onset  of  death ; 
108 


Charm 

no  more  dread  of  what  may  be  than  there  is  when 
the  hamlet,  with  its  little  roofs  and  tall  trees,  is 
folded  in  the  arms  of  the  night,  as  the  sunset  dies 
behind  the  hill.  Beauty  may  be  a  terrible  thing, 
as  in  the  sheeted  cataract,  with  all  its  boiling 
eddies,  or  in  the  falling  of  the  lightning  from  the 
womb  of  the  cloud.  There  is  desolation  behind 
that,  gigantic  movement,  ruthless  force;  but 
charm  comes  like  a  signal  of  security  and  good- 
will, and  even  its  inevitable  end  is  lit  with  some- 
thing of  mercy  and  quietness.  The  danger  of 
charm  is  that  it  is  the  mother  of  sentiment;  and 
the  danger  of  sentiment  is  not  that  it  is  untrue, 
but  that  it  takes  from  us  the  sense  of  proportion ; 
we  begin  to  be  unable  to  do  without  our  little  scenes 
and  sunsets;  and  the  eye  gets  so  used  to  dwelling 
upon  the  flower-strewn  pleasaunce,  with  its  screen- 
ing trees,  that  it  cannot  bear  to  face  the  far 
horizon,  with  its  menace  of  darkness  and  storm. 

Yet  we  are  very  grateful  to  those  who  can  teach 
us  to  turn  our  eyes  to  the  charm  which  surrounds 
us,  and  a  life  which  is  lived  without  such  percep- 
tion is  apt  to  be  a  rough  and  hurrying  thing,  even 
though  it  may  also  be  both  high  and  austere. 
Like  most  of  life,  the  true  success  lies  in  not  choos- 
109 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

ing  one  force  and  neglecting  another,  but  in  an 
expectant  kind  of  compromise.  The  great  affairs 
and  facts  of  life  flash  upon  us,  whether  we  will  or 
no;  and  even  the  man  whose  mind  is  bent  upon 
the  greatest  hopes  and  aims  may  find  strength  and 
consolation  in  the  lesser  and  simpler  delights. 
Mighty  spirits  like,  let  us  say,  Carlyle  and  Rus- 
kin,  were  not  hampered  or  distracted  from  their 
further  quest  by  the  microscopic  eye,  the  infinite 
zest  for  detail,  which  characterized  both.  No  one 
ever  spoke  so  finely  as  Carlyle  of  the  salient  fea- 
tures of  moorland  and  hill,  and  the  silence  so  deep 
that  it  was  possible  to  hear  the  far-off  sheep  crop- 
ping the  grass;  no  one  ever  noted  so  instantane- 
ously the  vivid  gesture  or  the  picturesque  turn  of 
speech,  or  dwelt  more  intently  upon  the  pathetic 
sculpture  of  experience  seen  in  the  old  humble 
workaday  faces  of  country-folk.  No  one  evei* 
delighted  more  ecstatically  than  Ruskin  in  the  color 
of  the  amber  cataract,  with  its  soft,  translucent 
rims,  its  flying  spray,  or  in  the  dim  splendors  of 
some  half-faded  fresco,  or  in  the  intricate  fa9ade 
of  the  crumbling,  crag-like  church  front.  But 
they  did  not  stay  there;  indeed,  Carlyle,  in  his 
passionate  career  among  verities  and  forces,  hardly 
110 


Charm 

took  enough  account  of  the  beauty  so  patiently 
entwined  with  mortal  things  ;  while  Ruskin's  sharp- 
est agonies  were  endured  when  he  found,  to  his 
dismay,  that  men  and  women  could  not  be  induced 
by  any  appeal  or  invective  to  heed  the  message  of 
beauty. 

It  is  true  that,  however  we  linger,  however  pas- 
sionately we  love  the  small,  sweet,  encircling  joys 
and  delights  of  life,  the  tragic  experience  comes  to 
us,  whether  we  will  or  no.  None  escapes.  And 
thus  our  care  must  be  not  to  turn  our  eyes  away 
from  what  in  sterner  moments  we  are  apt  to  think 
mere  shows  and  vanities,  but  to  use  them  serenely 
and  temperately.  St.  Augustine,  in  a  magnificent 
apologue  upon  the  glories  and  subtleties  of  light, 
can  only  end  by  the  prayer  that  his  heart  may  not 
thereby  be  seduced  from  heavenly  things ;  but  that 
is  the  false  kind  of  asceticism,  and  it  is  nothing 
more  than  a  fear  of  life,  if  our  only  concern  with 
it  is  to  shun  and  abhor  the  joy  it  would  fain  give 
us.  But  we  may  be  sure  that  life  has  a  meaning 
for  us  in  its  charm  and  loveliness;  not  the  whole 
meaning,  but  still  an  immense  significance.  To 
make  life  into  a  continuous  flight,  a  sad  expect- 
ancy, a  perpetual  awe,  is  wilfully  to  select  one 
111 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

range  of  experiences  and  to  neglect  its  kindness 
and  its  good-will.  We  may  grow  weak  in  our  sen- 
timent if  we  make  a  tragedy  out  of  life,  if  we  can- 
not bear  to  have  our  comfortable  arrangements 
disordered,  our  little  circle  of  pleasures  broken 
through.  The  triumph  is  to  be  ready  for  the 
change,  and  to  know  that  if  the  perfect  summer 
day  comes  to  an  end,  the  power  that  shaped  it  so, 
and  made  the  heart  swift  to  love  it,  has  yet  larger 
surprises  and  glories  in  store.  If  we  do  that,  then 
the  charm  of  life  takes  its  place  in  our  spirits  as 
the  evidence  of  something  joyful,  wistful,  pleasant, 
bound  up  with  the  essence  of  things;  if  it  dis- 
appears, like  the  gold  or  azure  thread  of  the 
tapestry,  it  is  only  to  emerge  in  the  pattern  farther 
on;  and  the  victory  is  not  to  attach  ourselves  to 
the  particular  touches  of  beauty  and  fineness  which 
we  see  in  the  familiar  scene  and  the  well-loved  circle, 
but  to  recognize  beauty  as  a  spirit,  a  quality  which 
is  forever  making  itself  felt,  forever  beckoning  and 
whispering  to  us,  and  which  will  not  fail  us  even 
if  for  a  time  the  urgent  wind  drives  us  far  into  the 
night  and  the  storm,  among  the  crash  of  the  break- 
ers, and  the  scream  of  loud  winds  over  the  sea. 


112 


SUNSET 


VI 

SUNSET 

THE  liquid  kindling  of  the  twilight,  the  west- 
ern  glow_o.f  clear-burning  fires,  bringing  no 
weariness  of  heat  but_the  exquisite  coolness_of 
darkling  airs,  is  of  all  the  ceremonial  of  the  day 
the  most  solemn  and  sacred  moment.  The  dawn 
has  its  own  splendors,  but  it  brightens  7)ut  of  secret 
mists  and  folded  clouds  into  the  common  light  of 
day,  when  the  burden  must  be  resumed  and  the 
common  business  of  the  world  renewed  again.  But 
the  sunset  wanes  from  glory  and  majesty  into  the 
stillness  of  the  star-hung  night,  when  tired  eyes 
may  close  in  sleep,  and^ehearse  the  mystery  of 
death;  and  so  the  dyijigdowii  of  light,  with  the 
suspension  of  daily  activities,  is  of  the  nature  of  a 
benediction.  Dawn  brings  the  consecration  of 
beauty  to  a  new  episode  of  life,  bidding  the  soul  to 
remember  throughout  the  toil  and  eagerness  of 
the  day  that  the  beginning  was  made  in  the  inno- 
116 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

cent  onrush  of  dewy  light;  but  when  the  evening 
comes,  the  deeds  and  words  of  the  daylight  are 
irrevocable  facts,  and  the  mood  is  not  one  of  for- 
ward-looking hope  and  adventure,  but  of  unalter- 
able memory,  and  of  things  dealt  with  so  and  not 
otherwise,  which  nothing  can  henceforward  change 
or  modify.  If  in  the  morning  we  feel  that  we  have 
power  over  life,  in  the  evening  we  know  that, 
whether  we  have  done  ill  or  well,  life's  power  over 
ourselves  has  been  asserted,  and  that  thus  and  thus 
the  record  must  stand. 

And  so  the  mood  of  evening  is  the  larger  and 
the  wiser  mood,  because  we  must  think  less  of  our- 
selves and  more  of  God.  In  the  dawn  it  seems  to 
us  that  we  have  our  part  to  play  and  that  nothing, 
not  even  God,  can  prevent  us  from  exercising  our 
will  upon  the  life  about  us ;  but  in  the  evening  we 
begin  to  wonder  how  much,  after  all,  we  have  the 
strength  to  effect ;  we  see  that  even  our  desires  and 
impulses  have  their  roots  far  back  in  a  past  which 
no  restlessness  of  design  or  energy  can  touch;  till 
we  end  by  thankfulness  that  we  have  been  allowed 
to  feel  and  to  experience  the  current  of  life  at  all. 
I  sat  the  other  day  by  the  bedside  of  an  old  and 
gracious  lady,  the  widow  of  a  great  artist,  whose 
116 


Stmset 

works  with  all  their  shapely  form  and  dusky  flashes 
of  rich  color  hung  on  the  walls  of  her  room.  She 
had  lived  for  many  years  in  the  forefront  of  a  great 
fellowship  of  art  and  endeavor;  she  had  seen  and 
known  intimately  all  the  greatest  figures  in  the  art 
and  literature  of  the  last  generation ;  and  she  was 
awaiting  with  perfect  serenity  and  dignity  the 
close.  She  said  to  me  with  a  deep  emotion,  "  Ah, 
the  only  thing  that  I  desire  is  that  I  may  continue 
to  feel  —  that  brings  suffering  in  abundance  with 
it,  but  while  we  suffer  we  are  at  least  alive.  Once 
or  twice  in  my  life  I  have  felt  the  numbness  of 
anguish,  when  a  blow  had  fallen,  and  I  could  not 
even  suffer.  That  is  the  only  thing  which  I  dread 
—  not  death,  nor  silence,  but  only  the  obliteration 
of  feeling  and  love."  That  was  a  wonderful  say- 
ing, full  of  life  and  energy.  She  did  not  wish  to 
recall  the  old  days,  nor  hanker  after  them  with  an 
unsatisfied  pain ;  and  I  saw  that  an  immortal  spirit 
dwelt  in  that  frail  body,  like  a  bird  in  an  outworn 
cage. 

However  much  one  may  enjoy  the  onrush  and 

vividness  of  life  —  and  I  for  one  find  that,  though 

vitality  runs  now  in   more   definite   and   habitual 

channels  —  yet  I  feel  that  though  one  has  done 

117 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

with  making  experiments,  though  one  wastes  less 
time  in  undertaking  doubtful  enterprises,  yet  there 
is  a  great  gain  in  the  concentration  of  energy,  and 
in  the  certain  knowledge  of  what  one's  definite  work 
really  is. 

Far  from  finding  the  spring  and  motion  of  life 
diminished,  I  feel  that  the  current  of  it  runs  with  a 
sharper  and  clearer  intensity,  because  I  have 
learned  my  limitations,  and  expend  no  energy  in 
useless  enterprises.  I  have  learned  what  the 
achievements  are  which  come  j  oyf ully  bearing  their 
sheaves  with  them,  and  what  are  the  trivial  and 
fruitless  aims.  When  I  was  younger  I  desired  to 
be  known  and  recognized  and  deferred  to.  I 
wanted  to  push  my  way  discreetly  into  many  com- 
panies, to  produce  an  impression,  to  create  a  sense 
of  admiration.  Now  as  the  sunset  draws  nearer, 
and  the  enriched  light,  withdrawn  from  the  further 
horizon,  begins  to  pulsate  more  intensely  in  the 
quarter  whence  it  must  soon  altogether  fade,  I 
begin  to  see  that  vague  and  widely  ranging  effects 
have  a  thinness  and  shallowness  about  them.  It  is 
a  poor  thing  just  to  see  oneself  transiently  re- 
flected in  a  hundred  little  mirrors.  There  is  no 
touch  of  reality  about  that.  Little  greetings, 
118 


Stmset 

casual  flashes  of  courteous  talk,  petty  compliments 
—  these  are  things  that  fade  as  soon  as  they  are 
born.  The  only  thing  worth  doing  is  a  little  bit 
of  faithful  and  solid  work,  something  given  away 
which  cOyU  Ulle  real  pam,  a  few  ideas  and  thoughts 
worked  patiently  out,  a  few  hearts  really  enlivened 
and  inspirited.  And  then,  too,  comes  the  con- 
sciousness that  much  of  one's  cherished  labor  is  of 
no  use  at  all  except  to  oneself ;  that  work  is  not  a 
magnificent  gift  presented  to  others,  but  a  whole- 
some privilege  conceded  to  oneself,  that  the  love 
which  brought  with  it  but  a  momentary  flash  of 
self-regarding  pleasure  is  not  love  at  all,  and  that 
only  love  which  means  suff^ering  —  not  delicate 
regrets  and  luxurious  reveries,  but  hard  and  hope- 
less pain  —  is  worth  the  name  of  love  at  all. 
Those  are  some  of  the  lights  of  sunset,  the  enfold- 
ing gleams  that  are  on  their  way  to  death,  and 
which  yet  testify  that  the  light  which  wanes  and 
lapses  here,  drawn  reluctantly  away  from  dark 
valley  and  somber  woodland,  is  yet  striding  ahead 
over  dewy  uplands  and  breaking  seas,  past  the 
upheaving  shoulder  of  the  world. 

But  best  of  all  the  gifts  of  sunset  to  the  spirit 
is  the  knowledge  that  behind  all  the  whirling  web  of 
119 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

daylight,  beyond  all  the  noise  and  laughter  and 
appetite  and  drudgery  of  life,  lies  the  spirit  of 
beauty  that  cannot  be  always  revealed  or  traced  in 
the  louder  and  more  urgent  pageantry  of  the  day. 
The  sunset  has  the  power  of  weaving  a  subtle  and 
remote  mystery  over  a  scene  that  by  day  has 
nothing  to  show  but  a  homely  and  obvious  anima- 
tion. I  was  traveling  the  other  day  and  passed, 
just  as  the  day  began  to  decline,  through  the  out- 
skirts of  a  bustling,  seaport  town.  It  had  all  the 
interest  and  curiosity  of  life.  Crowded  ware- 
houses, swinging  up  straw-packed  crates  into  pro- 
jecting pent-houses;  steamers  with  red-stained 
funnels,  open-mouthed  tubes,  gangways,  staircase- 
heads,  dangling  boats,  were  moored  by  bustling 
wharves.  One  could  not  divine  the  use  of  half  the 
strangely  shaped  objects  with  which  the  scene  was 
furnished,  or  what  the  business  could  be  of  all 
the  swarming  and  hurrying  figures.  Deep  sea- 
horns  blew  and  whistles  shrilled,  orders  were  given, 
hands  waved.  It  was  life  at  its  fullest  and  busiest, 
but  it  was  life  demanding  and  enforcing  its  claim 
and  concealing  its  further  purposes.  It  was  just 
a  glimpse  of  something  full  of  urgent  haste,  but 
pleasanter  to  watch  than  to  mix  with;  then  we 


SvMset 

passed  through  a  wilderness  of  little  houses,  street 
after  street,  yard  after  yard.  Presently  we  were 
rushing  away  from  it  all  past  a  lonely  sea-creek  that 
ran  far  up  into  the  low-lying  land.  That  had  a 
more  silent  life  of  its  own ;  old  dusky  hulks  lay  at 
anchor  in  the  channel;  the  tide  ebbed  away  from 
mudflats  and  oozy  inlets,  the  skeletons  of  worn- 
out  boats  stood  up  out  of  the  weltering  clay. 
Gradually,  as  the  sun  wentjdown  among  orange 
stains  and  twisted -clcaid-wreaths,  the_creek  nar- 
rowed  and  beyond  lay  a  mysterious  promontory 
with  shadowy  woods  and  low  bare  pasture  lands 
with  here  and  there  a  tower  standing  up  or  a 
solitary  sea-mark,  or  a  hamlet  of  clustered  houses 
by  the  water's  edge,  while  the  water  between  grew 
paler  and  stiller,  reflecting  the  wan  green  of  the 
sky.  It  is  not  easy  to  describe  the  effect  of  this 
scene,  thus  magically  transfigured,  upon  the  mind ; 
but  it  is  a  very  real  and  distinct  emotion,  though 
its  charm  depends  upon  the  fact  that  it  shifts  the 
reality  of  the  world  to  a  further  point,  away  from 
the  definite  shapes  and  colors,  the  tangible  and  visi- 
ble relations  of  things,  which  become  for  an  in- 
stant like  a  translucent  curtain  through  which  one 
catches  a  glimpse  of  a  larger  and  more  beautiful 
121 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

reality.  The  specific  hopes,  fears,  schemes,  de- 
signs, purposes  of  life,  suddenly  become  an  inter- 
lude and  not  an  end.  They  do  not  become  phan- 
tasmal and  unreal,  but  they  are  known  for  a  brief 
moment  as  only  temporary  conditions,  which  by 
their  hardness  and  sharpness  obscure  a  further 
and  larger  life,  existing  before  they  existed,  and 
extending  itself  beyond  their  momentary  impact 
and  influence.  All  that  one  is  engaged  in  busily 
saying  and  doing  and  enacting  is  seen  in  that  in- 
stant to  be  only  as  a  ripple  on  a  deep  pool.  It 
does  not  make  the  activities  of  life  either  futile  or 
avoidable;  it  only  gives  the  mystical  sense,  that 
however  urgent  and  important  they  may  seem, 
there  is  something  further,  larger,  greater,  beyond 
them,  of  which  they  are  a  real  part,  but  only  a 
part. 

Moreover,  in  my  own  experience,  the  further  se- 
cret, whatever  it  is,  is  by  no  means  wholly  joyful 
and  not  at  all  light-hearted.  It  seems  to  me  at 
such  times  that  it  is  rather  solemn,  profound,  serin 
ous,  difficult,  and  sad.  But  it  is  not  a  heavy  or  de- 
pressing sadness  —  indeed,  the  thought  is  at  once 
hopeful  and  above  everything  beautiful.  It  has 
nothing  that  is  called  sentimental  about  it.  It  is 
122 


Sunset 

not  full  of  rest  and  content  and  peace ;  it  is  rather 
strong  and  stem,  though  it  is  gentle  too ;  but  it  is 
the  kind  of  gentle  strength  which  faces  labor  and 
hardness,  not  troubled  by  them,  and  indeed  know- 
ing that  only  thus  can  the  secret  be  attained. 
There  is  no  hint  of  easy,  childlike  happiness  about 
the  mood;  there  is  a  happiness  in  it,  but  it  is  an 
old  and  a  wise  happiness  that  has  learned  how  to 
wait  and  is  fully  prepared  for  endurance.  There 
is  no  fretfulness  in  it,  no  chafing  over  dreams  un- 
realized, no  impatience  or  disappointment.  But  it 
does  not  speak  of  an  untroubled  bliss  —  rather  of 
a  deep,  sad  and  loving  patience,  which  expects  no 
fulfilment,  no  easy  satisfaction  of  desire. 

It  always  seems  to  me  that  the  quality  which 
most  differentiates  men  is  the  power  of  recognizing 
the  Unknown.  Some  natures  acquiesce  buoyantly 
or  wretchedly  in  present  conditions,  and  cannot  in 
any  circumstances  look  beyond  them;  some  again 
have  a  deep  distaste  for  present  conditions  what- 
ever they  are ;  and  again  there  are  some  who  throw 
themselves  eagerly  and  freely  into  present  condi- 
tions, use  experience,  taste  life,  enjoy,  grieve,  dis- 
like, but  yet  preserve  a  consciousness  of  something 
above  and  beyond.  The  idealist  is  one  who  has  a 
123 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

need  In  his  soul  to  worship,  to  admire,  to  love. 
The  mistake  made  too  often  by  religious  idealists 
is  to  believe  that  this  sense  of  worship  can  only  be 
satisfied  by  religions  and,  even  more  narrowly,  by 
ecclesiastical  observance.  But  there  are  many 
idealists  to  whom  religion  with  Its  scientific  creeds 
and  definite  dogmas  seems  only  a  dreary  sort  of 
metaphysic,  an  attempt  to  define  what  Is  beyond 
definition.  But  there  are  some  idealists  who  find 
the  sense  of  worship  and  the  consciousness  of  an 
immortal  power  In  the  high  passions  and  affections 
of  life.  To  these  the  human  form,  the  spirit  that 
looks  out  from  human  eyes,  are  the  symbols  of 
their  mystery.  Others  find  It  In  art  and  music, 
others  again  in  the  endless  loveliness  of  nature, 
her  seas  and  streams,  her  hills  and  woods.  Others 
again  find  It  In  visions  of  helping  and  raising  man- 
kind out  of  base  conditions,  or  in  scientific  investi- 
gation of  the  miraculous  constitution  of  nature. 
It  has  a  hundred  forms  and  energies ;  but  the  one 
feature  of  it  Is  the  sense  of  some  vast  and  mysteri- 
ous power,  which  holds  the  world  in  Its  grasp  — 
a  power  which  can  be  dimly  apprehended  and  even 
communicated  with.  Prayer  Is  one  manifestation 
of  this  sense,  though  prayer  is  but  a  formulation 
124 


Sunset 

of  one's  desires  for  oneself  and  for  the  world. 
But  the  essential  and  vital  part  of  the  mystery 
is  not  what  the  soul  asks  of  it,  but  the  signals 
which  it  makes  to  the  soul.  And  here  I  am  but 
recording  my  own  experience  when  I  say  that  the 
lights  and  gleams  of  sunset,  its  golden  inlets  and 
cloud-ripples,  the  dusky  veil  it  weaves  about  the 
world,  is  for  my  own  spirit  the  solemnity  which 
effects  for  me  what  I  believe  that  the  mass  effects 
for  a  devoted  Catholic  —  the  unfolding  in  hints 
and  symbols  of  the  mysteries  of  God.  An  unbe- 
liever may  look  on  at  a  mass  and  see  nothing  but 
the  vesture  and  the  rite,  a  drama  of  woven  paces 
and  waving  hands,  when  a  believer  may  become 
aware  of  the  very  presence  of  the  divine.  And  the 
sunset  has  for  me  that  same  imveiling  of  the 
beauty  of  God;  it  illumines  and  transfigures  life; 
it  shows  me  visibly  and  sacredly  that  beauty  pure 
and  stainless  runs  from  end  to  end  of  the  universe, 
and  calls  upon  me  to  adore  it,  to  prostrate  myself 
before  its  divine  essence.  The  fact  that  another 
may  see  it  carelessly  and  indifferently  makes  no 
difference.  It  only  means  that  not  thus  does  he 
perceive  God.  But,  for  myself,  I  know  no  experi- 
ence more  wholly  and  deeply  religious  than  when  I 
125 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

pass  in  solitude  among  deep  stream-fed  valleys,  or 
over  the  wide  fenland  or  through  the  familiar 
hamlet,  and  see  the  dying  day  flame  and  smolder 
far  down  in  the  west  among  cloudy  pavilions  or  in 
tranquil  spaces  of  clear  sky.  Then  the  well- 
known  land  whose  homely,  day-long  energies  I 
know  seems  to  gather  itself  together  into  a  far 
and  silent  adoration,  to  commit  itself  trustfully 
and  quietly  to  God,  to  receive  His  endless  bene- 
diction, and  in  that  moment  to  become  itself  eter- 
nal in  a  soft  harmony  of  voiceless  praise  and  pas- 
sionate desire. 


126 


THE  HOUSE  OF  PENGERSICK 


VII 

THE  HOUSE  OF  PENGERSICK 

THERE  are  days  —  perhaps  it  is  well  that 
they  are  not  more  common  —  when  by  some 
singular  harmony  of  body  and  spirit,  every  little 
sound  and  sight  strike  on  the  senses  with  a  peculiar 
sharpness  and  distinctness  of  quality,  have  a  keen 
and  racy  savor,  and  come  as  delightfully  home  to 
the  mind  as  cool  well-water  to  thirsty  lips. 
Everything  seems  in  place,  in  some  well-designed 
combination  or  symphony  of  the  senses ;  and  more 
than  that  —  the  sound,  the  sight,  whatever  it  be, 
sets  free  a  whole  train  of  far-reaching  and  mys- 
terious thoughts,  that  seem  to  flash  the  secret  of 
life  on  the  spirit  —  or  rather  hint  it  in  a  tender, 
smiling  way,  as  a  mother  nods  a  delighted  acqui- 
escence to  the  eager  questions  of  a  child  face  to 
face  with  some  happy  surprise.  That  day  of 
January  was  just  such  a  day  to  me,  as  we  drove 
along  the  dreary  road  from  Marazion  to  Helston, 
129 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

by  ruined  mine-towers  with  their  heaps  of  scoriae, 
looking  out  to  the  sea,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  to  the  low,  monotonous  slopes  of  tilth  and 
pasture,  rising  and  falling  like  broad-backed  waves, 
with  here  and  there  a  wild  and  broken  wood  of  firs, 
like  the  forest  of  Broceliande,  or  a  holt  of  wind- 
brushed,  fawn-colored  ash  trees,  half  empurpled 
by  the  coming  of  spring,  in  some  rushy  dingle  by 
the  stream  side. 

It  was  a  cool  gray  day,  with  a  haze  over  the 
sea,  the  gusty  sky  of  yesterday  having  hardened 
into  delicate  flakes  of  pearly  cloud,  like  the  sand 
on  some  wave-beaten  beach.  It  was  all  infinitely 
soft  and  refreshing  to  the  eye,  that  outspread 
pastoral  landscape,  seen  in  a  low  dusk,  like  the 
dusk  of  a  winter  dawn. 

It  was  then  that  in  a  little  hollow  to  our  right 
we  saw  the  old  House  of  Pengersick  —  what  a 
grim,  lean,  hungry  sort  of  name! —  We  made 
our  way  down  along  a  little  road,  the  big  worn 
flints  standing  up  out  of  the  gravel,  by  brakes  of 
bramble,  turf-walls  where  the  ferns  grew  thick,  by 
bits  of  wild  upland  covered  with  gorse  and  rusty 
bracken,  and  down  at  last  to  the  tiny  hamlet — - 
four  or  five  low  white  houses,  in  little  gardens 
130 


The  House  of  Pengersick 

where  the  escallonia  grew  thick  and  glossy,  the 
purple  veronica  bloomed  richly,  and  the  green 
fleshy  mesembryanthemum  tumbled  and  dripped  over 
the  fences.  The  tower  itself  rose  straight  out  of 
a  farmyard,  where  calves  stared  through  the  gate, 
pigs  and  hens  routed  and  picked  in  the  mire.  I 
have  seldom  seen  so  beautiful  a  bit  of  building:  it 
was  a  great  square  battlemented  tower,  with  a  tur- 
ret, the  mullioned  windows  stopped  up  with  sea- 
worn  boulders.  The  whole  built  of  very  peculiar 
stone,  of  a  dark  gray  tinge,  weathered  on  the  sea- 
ward side  to  a  most  delicate  silvery  gray,  with 
ivy  sprawling  over  it  in  places,  like  water  shot  out 
from  a  pail  over  a  stone  floor.  There  were  just  a 
few  traces  of  other  iDuildings  in  the  sheds  and 
walls,  and  bits  of  carved  stonework  piled  up  in  a 
rockery.  No  doubt  the  little  farm  itself  and  the 
cottages  were  all  built  out  of  the  ruins. 

From  the  tower  itself  —  it  has  a  few  bare  rooms 
filled  with  farm  lumber  —  one  can  see  down  the 
valley  to  the  long  gray  line  of  the  Prah  sands, 
and  the  low  dusky  cliiFs  of  Hove  point,  where  the 
waves  were  breaking  white. 

I  suppose  it  needed  to  be  a  strong  place.  The 
Algiers  and  Sallee  pirates  used  to  make  descents 
131 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

upon  this  coast  till  a  comparatively  recent  date. 
As  late  as  1636  they  kidnapped  seven  boats  and 
forty-two  fishermen  off  the  Manacles,  none  of  whom 
were  ever  heard  of  again.  Eighty  fishermen  from 
Looe  were  captured  in  one  day,  and  there  is  a 
complaint  extant  from  the  justices  of  Cornwall  to 
the  lord  lieutenant  that  in  one  year  Cornwall  had 
lost  above  a  thousand  mariners  thus ! 

But  there  was  also  another  side  to  the  picture; 
the  natives  all  along  this  coast  were  dreadful 
wreckers  and  plunderers  themselves,  and  made  lit- 
tle account  of  burning  a  ship  and  knocking  the 
survivors  on  the  head.  The  very  parish,  Germoe, 
in  which  Pengersick  stands,  had  as  bad  a  name  as 
any  in  Cornwall: 

God  keep  us  from  rocks  and  shelving  sands 

And  save  us  from  Breage  and  Germoe  men's  hands, 

runs  the  old  rime.  And  there  is  an  evil  old  story 
of  how  a  treasure  ship,  the  St.  Andrew  of  Portu- 
gal, went  ashore  at  Gunwalloe  in  January,  1526. 
There  were  thousands  of  cakes  of  copper  and  silver 
on  board,  plate,  pearls,  jewels,  chains,  brooches, 
arras,  satins,  velvets,  sets  of  armor  for  the  King 
of  Portugal,  and  a  huge  chest  of  coined  gold. 
132 


The  House  of  Pengersick 

The  wretched  crew  got  most  of  the  treasure  to 
land  and  stacked  it  on  the  cliffs,  when  John  Milli- 
ton  of  Pengersick,  with  a  St.  Aubjn  and  a  Go- 
dolphin,  came  down  with  sixty  armed  men,  and 
took  all  the  treasure  away.  Complaints  were 
made,  and  the  three  gentlemen  protested  that  they 
had  but  ridden  down  to  save  the  crew,  had  found 
them  destitute,  and  had  even  given  them  money. 
But  I  daresay  the  big  guest-chamber  of  Pengersick 
was  hung  with  Portuguese  arras  for  many  a  long 
year  afterwards. 

The  Millitons  died  out,  and  their  land  passed 
by  purchase  or  marriage  to  the  descendants  of 
another  of  the  three  pious  squires,  Godolphin  of 
Godolphin  —  and  belongs  to-day  to  his  descendant, 
the  Duke  of  Leeds. 

One  would  have  thought  that  men  could  not 
have  borne  to  live  so,  in  such  deadly  insecurity. 
But  probably  they  troubled  their  heads  little  about 
the  pirates,  kept  the  women  and  children  at  home, 
and  set  a  retainer  on  the  cliff  in  open  weather,  to 
scan  the  offing  for  the  light-rigged  barques,  while 
poorer  folk  took  their  chance.  We  live  among  a 
different  set  of  risks  now,  and  think  little  of  them, 
as  the  days  pass. 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

The  life  of  the  tower  was  simple  and  hardy 
enough  —  some  fishing  and  hunting,  some  setting 
of  springes  on  the  moor  for  woodcock  and  rabbits, 
much  farmwork,  solid  eating  and  drinking,  and  an 
occasional  carouse  —  a  rude,  plentiful,  healthy 
life,  perhaps  not  as  far  removed  from  our  own  as 
we  like  to  believe. 

But  the  old  tower  spoke  to  me  to-day  of  differ- 
ent things,  of  the  buried  life  of  the  past,  of  the 
strange  drift  of  human  souls  through  the  world 
for  their  little  span  of  life,  love,  and  sorrow,  and 
all  so  pathetically  ignorant  of  what  goes  before 
and  follows  after,  why  it  so  comes  about,  and  what 
is  the  final  aim  of  the  will  we  blindly  serve.  Here 
was  a  house  of  men,  I  said  to  myself,  with  the  same 
hopes  and  fears  and  fancies  as  myself,  and  yet 
none  of  them,  could  I  recall  them,  could  give  me 
any  reason  for  the  life  we  thus  hurriedly  live,  so 
much  of  it  entirely  joyful  and  delightful,  so  much 
of  it  distasteful  and  afflicting.  On  a  sunny  day  of 
summer,  with  the  sea  a  sapphire  blue,  set  with  great 
purple  patches,  the  scent  of  the  gorse  in  the  air, 
the  sound  of  the  clear  stream  in  one's  ears,  what 
could  be  sweeter  than  to  live?  and  even  on  dark 
days,  when  the  wind  volleys  up  from  the  sea,  and 
134? 


The  House  of  Pengersick 

the  rain  dashes  on  the  windows,  and  the  gulls  veer 
and  sail  overhead,  the  great  guest  room  with  its  fire 
of  wreckage,  the  women  working,  the  children 
playing  about,  must  have  been  a  pleasant  place 
enough.  But  even  to  the  strongest  and  boldest 
of  the  old  squires  the  end  came,  as  the  wagon  with 
the  coffin  jolted  along  the  stony  lane,  and  the  bell 
of  Germoe  came  faintly  over  the  hill. 

But  I  could  not  think  of  that  to-day,  with  a 
secret  joy  in  my  heart;  I  thought  rather  of  the 
splendid  mystery  of  life,  that  seems  to  screen  from 
us  something  more  gracious  still  —  the  steep  velvet 
sky  full  of  star-dust,  the  flush  of  spring  in  sunlit 
orchards,  the  soft,  thunderous  echoes  of  great 
ocean  billows,  the  orange  glow  of  sunset  behind 
dark  woods:  all  that  the  background  of  life; 
and  then  the  converse  of  friend  with  friend,  the 
intercepted  glance  of  wondering  eyes,  the  whis- 
pered message  of  the  heart.  All  this,  and  a  crowd 
of  other  sweet  images  and  fancies  came  upon  me  in 
a  rush  to-day,  like  scents  from  a  twilight  garden, 
as  I  watched  the  old  silvery  tower  stand  up  bluff 
and  square,  with  the  dark  moorland  behind  it,  and 
the  little  houses  clustering  about  its  feet. 


135 


VILLAGES 


VIII 
VILLAGES 

I  WONDER  if  any  human  being  has  ever  ex- 
pended as  much  sincere  and  unrequited  love 
upon  the  little  pastoral  villages  about  Cambridge 
as  I  have.  No  one  ever  seems  to  me  to  take  the 
smallest  interest  in  them  or  to  know  them  apart  or 
to  remember  where  they  are.  It  is  true  that  it 
takes  a  very  faithful  lover  to  distinguish  instantly 
and  impeccably  between  Histon,  Hinxton,  Haux- 
ton,  Harston,  and  Harlton;  but  to  me  they  have 
all  of  them  a  perfectly  distinct  quality,  and  make 
a  series  of  charming  little  pastoral  pictures  in  the 
mind.  Who  shall  justly  and  perfectly  assess  the 
beautiful  claims  of  Great  and  Little  Eversden?  I 
doubt  if  any  inhabitant  of  Cambridge  but  myself 
and  one  friend  of  mine,  a  good  man  and  true,  could 
do  it.  Yet  it  is  as  pleasant  to  have  a  connoisseur- 
ship  in  villages  as  to  have  a  connoisseurship  in 
wines  or  cigars,  though  it  is  not  so  regarded. 
139 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

What  is  the  charm  of  them?  That  I  cannot 
say.  It  is  a  mystery,  like  the  charm  of  all  sweet 
things;  and  further,  what  is  the  meaning  of  love 
for  an  inanimate  thing,  with  no  individuality,  no 
personality,  no  power  of  returning  love?  The 
charm  of  love  is  that  one  discerns  some  spirit  mak- 
ing signals  back.  "  I  like  you  to  be  here,  I  trust 
you,  I  am  glad  to  be  with  you,  I  wish  to  give  you 
something,  to  increase  your  joy,  as  mine  is  in- 
creased." That,  or  something  like  that,  is  what 
one  reads  in  the  eyes  and  faces  and  gestures  of 
those  whom  one  dares  to  love.  One  would  other- 
wise be  sadly  and  mournfully  alone  if  one  could  not 
come  across  the  traces  of  something,  some  one 
whose  heart  leaps  up  and  whose  pulse  quickens  at 
the  proximity  of  comrade  and  friend  and  lover. 
But  even  so  there  is  always  the  thought  of  the 
parting  ahead,  when,  after  the  sharing  of  joy,  each 
has  to  go  on  his  way  alone. 

Then,  one  may  love  animals ;  but  that  is  a  very 
strange  love,  for  the  man  and  the  animal  cannot 
understand  each  other.  The  dog  may  be  a  true 
and  faithful  comrade,  and  there  really  is  nothing 
m  the  world  more  wonderful  than  the  trustful  love 
pf  a  dog  for  a  man.  One  may  love  a  horse,  I  sup- 
140 


Villages 

pose,  though  the  horse  is  a  foolish  creature  at 
best;  one  may  have  a  sober  friendship  with  a  cat, 
though  a  cat  does  little  more  than  tolerate  one; 
and  a  bird  can  be  a  merry  little  playfellow:  but 
the  terror  of  wild  animals  for  men  has  something 
rather  dreadful  about  it,  because  it  stands  for 
many  centuries  of  cruel  wrong-doing. 

And  one  may  love,  too,  with  a  wistful  sort  of 
love  the  works  of  men,  pictures,  music,  statues; 
but  that,  I  think,  is  because  one  discerns  a  human 
figure  at  the  end  of  a  vista — a.  figure  hurrying 
away  through  the  ages,  but  whom  one  feels 
one  could  have  loved  had  time  and  place  only 
allowed. 

But  when  it  comes  to  loving  trees  and  flowers, 
streams  and  hills,  buildings  and  fields,  what  is  it 
that  happens?  I  have  a  perfectly  distinct  feel- 
ing about  these  little  villages  hereabouts.  Some 
are  to  me  like  courteous  strangers,  some  like  dull 
and  indifferent  people,  some  like  pleasant,  genial 
folk  whom  I  am  mildly  pleased  to  see;  but  with 
some  I  have  a  real  and  devoted  friendship.  I  like 
visiting  them,  and  if  I  cannot  visit  them,  I  think 
of  them ;  when  I  am  far  away  the  thought  of  them 
comes  across  me,  and  I  am  glad  to  think  of  them 
141 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

waiting  there  for  me,  nestling  under  their  hill,  the 
smoke  going  up  above  the  apple-orchards. 

One  or  two  of  them  are  particularly  beloved 
because  I  visited  them  first  thirty  years  ago,  when 
I  was  an  undergraduate,  and  the  thought  of  the 
old  days  and  the  old  friendships  springs  up  again 
like  a  sweet  and  far-ofF  fragrance  when  I  enter 
them.  Yet  I  do  not  know  any  of  the  people  who 
live  in  these  villages,  though  by  dint  of  going  there 
often  there  are  a  few  people  by  whom  I  am  recog- 
nized and  saluted. 

But  let  me  take  one  village  in  particular,  and  I 
will  not  name  it,  because  one  ought  not  to  publish 
the  names  of  those  whom  one  loves.  What  does  it 
consist  of?  It  straggles  along  a  rough  and  ill-laid 
lane,  under  a  little  wold,  once  a  sheep-walk,  now 
long  plowed  up.  The  soil  of  the  wold  is  pale,  so 
that  in  the  new-plowed  fields  there  rest  soft,  cream- 
like jshadows  when  the  evening  sun  falls  aslant. 
There  are  two  or  three  substantial  farm-houses  of 
pale  brick,  comfortable  old  places,  with  sheds  and 
ricks  and  cattle-byres  and  bams  close  about  them. 
And  I  think  it  is  strange  that  the  scent  of  a 
cattle-byre,  with  its  rich  manure  and  its  oozing 
pools,  is  not  ungrateful  to  the  human  sense.  It 
142 


Villages 

ought  to  be,  but  It  Is  not.     It  gives  one,  by  long 
inheritance,  no  doubt,  a  homelike  feeling. 

Then  there  are  many  plastered,  white-walled, 
Irregular  cottages,  very  quaint  and  pretty,  perhaps 
a  couple  of  centuries  old,  very  ill  built,  no  doubt, 
but  enchanting  to  look  at;  there  is  a  new  school- 
house,  very  ugly  at  present,  with  its  smart  red 
brick  and  its  stone  facings  —  ugly  because  it  does 
not  seem  to  have  grown  up  out  of  the  place,  but  to 
have  been  brought  there  by  rail;  and  there  are  a 
few  new  yellow-brick  cottages,  probably  much 
pleasanter  to  live  In  than  the  old  ones,  but  with  no 
sort  of  Interest  or  charm.  The  whole  Is  sur- 
rounded by  little  fields,  orchards,  closes,  paddocks, 
and  a  good  many  great  elms  stand  up  above  the 
house-roofs.  There  Is  one  quaint  old  farm,  with 
a  moat  and  a  dove-cote  and  a  fine,  old  mellow  brick 
wall  surrounded  by  little  pollarded  elms,  very 
quaint  and  characteristic ;  and  then  there  Is  a  big, 
ancient  church,  by  whom  built  one  cannot  divine, 
because  there  Is  no  squire  In  the  village,  and  the 
farmers  and  laborers  could  no  more  build  such  a 
church  now  than  they  could  build  a  stellar  obser- 
vatory. It  would  cost  nowadays  not  less  than  ten 
thousand  pounds,  and  there  is  no  record  of  who 
143 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

gave  the  money  or  who  the  architect  was.  It  has 
a  fine  tower  and  a  couple  of  solid  bells;  it  has  a 
few  bits  of  good  brass-work,  a  chandelier  and  some 
candlesticks,  and  it  has  a  fine  eighteenth-century 
tomb  in  a  comer,  with  a  huge  slab  of  black  basalt 
on  the  top,  and  a  heraldic  shield  and  a  very  obsequi- 
ous inscription,  which  might  apply  to  any  one,  and 
yet  could  be  true  of  nobody.  Why  the  particular 
old  gentleman  should  want  to  sleep  there,  or  who 
was  willing  to  spend  so  much  on  his  lying  in  state, 
no  one  knows,  and  I  fear  that  no  one  cares  except 
myself. 

There  are  a  few  little  bits  of  old  glass  in  the 
church,  in  the  traceries  of  the  windows,  just  enough 
to  show  that  some  one  liked  making  pretty  things, 
and  that  some  one  else  cared  enough  to  pay  for 
them.  And  then  there  is  a  solid  rectory  by  the 
church,  inhabited  for  centuries  by  fellows  of  a  cer- 
tain Cambridge  college.  I  do  not  expect  that  they 
lived  there  very  much.  Probably  they  rode  over 
on  Sundays,  read  two  services,  and  had  a  cold 
luncheon  in  between;  perhaps  they  visited  a  sick 
parishioner,  and  even  came  over  on  a  week-day  for 
a  marriage  or  a  funeral ;  and  I  daresay  that  in  the 
summer,  when  the  college  was  deserted,  they  came 
144 


Villages 

and  lived  there  for  a  few  weeks,  rather  bored,  and 
longing  for  the  warm  combination  room  and  the 
college  port  and  the  gossip  and  stir  of  the  place. 

That  is  really  all,  I  think.  And  what  is  there  to 
love  in  all  that? 

Well,  it  is  a  little  space  of  earth  in  which  life 
has  been  going  on  for  I  daresay  a  thousand  years. 
The  whole  place  has  grown  slowly  up  out  of  the 
love  and  care  and  work  of  man.  Perhaps  there 
were  nothing  but  little  huts  and  hovels  at  first,  with 
a  tiny  rubble  church ;  then  the  houses  grew  a  little 
bigger  and  better.  Perhaps  it  was  emptied  again 
by  the  Black  Death,  which  took  a  long  toll  of  vic- 
tims hereabouts.  Shepherds,  plowmen,  hedgers, 
ditchers,  farmers,  an  ale-house-keeper,  a  shop- 
keeper or  two,  and  a  priest  —  that  has  been  the 
village  for  a  thousand  years.  Patient,  stupid, 
toilsome,  unimaginative,  kindly  little  lives,  I  dare- 
say. Not  much  interested  in  one  another,  ill  edu- 
cated, gossipy,  brutish,  superstitious,  but  surprised 
perhaps  into  sudden  passions  of  love,  and  still  more 
surprised  perhaps  by  the  joys  of  fatherhood  and 
motherhood ;  with  children  of  all  ages  growing  up, 
pretty  and  engaging  and  dirty  and  amusing  and 
naughty,  fading  one  by  one  into  dull  and  sober 
145 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

age,  and  into  decrepitude,  and  the  churchyard  at 
the  end  of  all! 

Well,  I  think  all  that  pathetic  and  mysterious, 
and  beautiful  with  the  beauty  that  reality  has.  I 
want  to  know  who  all  the  folks  were,  what  they 
looked  like,  what  they  cared  about  or  thought 
about,  how  they  made  terms  with  pain  and  death, 
what  they  hoped,  expected,  feared,  and  what  has 
become  of  them.  Every  one  as  urgently  and 
vehemently  and  interestedly  alive  as  I  myself,  and 
yet  none  of  them  with  the  slightest  idea  how  they 
got  there  or  whither  they  were  going  —  the  great, 
helpless,  good-natured,  passive  army  of  men  and 
women,  pouring  like  a  stream  through  the  world, 
and  borne  away  on  the  wings  of  the  wind.  They 
were  glad  to  be  alive,  no  doubt,  when  the  sun  fell 
on  the  apple-orchard,  and  the  scent  of  the  fruit 
was  in  the  air,  and  the  bees  hummed  round  the 
blossoms,  when  people  smile  at  each  other  and  say 
kind  and  meaningless  things ;  they  were  afraid,  no 
doubt,  as  they  lay  in  pain  in  the  stuffy  attics,  with 
the  night  wind  blustering  round  the  chimney- 
stack,  and  hoped  to  be  well  again.  Then  there 
were  occasions  and  treats,  the  Sunday  dinner,  the 
wedding,  the  ride  in  the  farm-cart  to  Cambridge, 
146 


Villages 

the  visit  of  the  married  sister  from  her  home  close 
bj.  I  do  not  suppose  they  knew  or  cared  what 
was  happening  in  the  world.  War  and  politics 
made  little  difference  to  them.  They  knew  about 
the  weather,  they  cared  perhaps  about  their  work, 
they  liked  the  Sunday  holiday  —  all  very  dim  and 
simple,  thoughts  not  expressed,  feelings  not  ut- 
tered, experience  summed  up  in  little  bits  of 
phrases.  Yet  I  like  to  think  that  they  were  pleased 
with  the  look  of  the  place  without  knowing  why. 
I  don't  deceive  myself  about  all  this  or  make  it  out 
as  idyllic.  I  don't  exactly  wish  to  have  lived  thus, 
and  I  expect  it  was  coarse,  greedy,  dull,  ugly,  a 
great  deal  of  it;  but  though  I  can  think  fine 
thoughts  about  it,  and  put  my  thoughts  into  musi- 
cal words,  I  do  not  honestly  believe  that  my  life, 
my  hopes,  my  feelings  differ  very  much  from  the 
experience  of  these  old  people. 

Of  course  I  have  books  and  pictures  and  intel- 
lectual fancies  and  ideas ;  but  that  is  only  an  elab- 
orate game  that  I  play,  the  things  I  notice  and 
recognize:  but  I  expect  the  old  hearts  and  minds 
were  at  work,  too,  noticing  and  observing  and  re- 
cording ;  and  all  my  flourish  of  talk  and  thought  is 
only  a  superficial  affair. 

147 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

And  what  consecrates  and  lights  up  the  little 
place  for  me,  touches  it  with  golden  hues,  makes  it 
moving,  touching,  beautiful,  is  the  thought  of  all 
that  strange,  unconscious  life,  the  love  and  hate, 
the  fear  and  the  content,  the  joy  and  sorrow,  that 
has  surged  to  and  fro  among  the  thatched  roofs 
and  apple-orchards  so  many  centuries  before  I 
came  into  being,  and  will  continue  when  I  am  trod- 
den into  the  dust. 

.When  I  came  here  first  thirty  years  ago,  explor- 
ing with  a  friend  long  dead  the  country-side,  it 
was,  I  am  sure,  the  same  thought  that  made  the 
place  beautiful.  I  could  not  then  put  it  into 
words ;  I  have  learned  to  do  that  since,  and  word- 
painting  is  a  very  pleasant  pastime.  It  was  a  hot, 
bright  summer  day, —  I  recall  the  scent  of  the 
clover  in  the  air  —  and  there  came  on  me  that 
curious  uplifting  of  the  heart,  that  wonder  as  to 
what  all  the  warmth  and  scent,  the  green-piled 
tree,  the  grazing  cows,  the  children  trotting  to  and 
fro,  could  possibly  mean,  or  why  it  was  all  so 
utterly  delightful.  It  was  not  a  religious  feeling, 
but  there  was  a  sense  of  a  great,  good-natured, 
beauty-loving  mind  behind  it  all  —  a  mind  very 
like  our  own,  and  yet  even  then  with  a  shadow 
148 


Villages 

striking  across  it  —  the  shadow  of  pain  and  grief 
and  hollow  farewells. 

I  was  not  a  very  contented  boy  in  those  days, 
in  some  bewilderment  of  both  mind  and  heart, 
having  had  my  first  experience  that  life  could  be 
hard  and  intricate.  The  world  was  sweeter  to  me, 
though  not  so  interesting  as  it  now  is ;  but  I  had 
just  the  same  deep  desire  as  I  have  now,  though  it 
has  not  been  satisfied,  to  find  something  strong  and 
secure  and  permanent,  some  heart  to  trust  utterly 
and  entirely,  something  that  could  understand  and 
comfort  and  explain  and  reassure,  a  power  which 
one  could  clasp  hands  with,  as  a  child  lays  its  deli- 
cate finger  in  a  strong,  enfolding  palm,  and  never  be 
in  any  doubt  again.  It  is  one's  weakness  which  is 
so  tiring,  so  disappointing ;  and  yet  I  do  not  want  a 
careless,  indifferent,  brutal,  healthy  strength  at  all. 
It  is  the  strength  of  love  and  peace  that  I  want, 
not  to  be  afraid,  not  to  be  troubled.  It  is  all 
somewhere,  I  do  not  doubt ; 

Yet,  oh,  the  place  could  I  but  find! 

I  have  been  through  my  village  this  very  day. 
The  sun  was  just  beginning  to  slope  to  the  west; 
the  sun  poured  out  his  rays  of  gold  from  under- 
149 


Esctipe  and  Other  Essays 

neath  the  shadow  of  a  great  dark,  up-piled  cloud  — 
the  long  rays  which  my  nurse  used  to  tell  me  were 
sucking  up  water,  but  which  I  believed  to  be  the 
eye  of  God.  The  trees  were  bare,  but  the  elm- 
buds  were  red,  and  the  willow-rods  were  crimson 
with  spring;  the  little  stream  bubbled  clearly  off 
the  hill ;  and  the  cottage  gardens  were  full  of  up- 
thrusting  blades;  while  the  mezereons  were  all 
aflame  with  bloom.  Life  moving,  pausing,  rush- 
ing past!  I  wonder.  When  I  pass  the  gate,  if  I 
see  the  dawn  of  that  other  morning,  I  cannot  help 
feeling  that  I  shall  want  to  see  my  little  village 
again,  to  loiter  down  the  lane  among  the  white- 
gabled  houses.  Shall  I  be  much  wiser  then  than  I 
am  now.?  Shall  I  have  seen  or  heard  something 
which  will  set  my  anxious  mind  at  rest?  Who  can 
tell  me?  And  yet  the  old,  gnarled  apple-boughs, 
with  the  blue  sky  behind  them,  and  the  new-spring- 
ing grass  all  seem  to  hold  the  secret,  which  I  want 
as  much  to  interpret  and  make  my  own  as  when  I 
wandered  through  the  hamlet  under  the  wold  more 
than  thirty  years  ago. 


150 


DREAMS 


IX 

DREAMS 

THERE  is  a  movement  nowadays  among  the 
philosophers  who  study  the  laws  of  thought, 
to  lay  a  strong  emphasis  upon  the  phenomena  of 
dreams ;  what  part  of  us  is  it  that  enacts  with  such 
strange  zest  and  vividness,  and  yet  with  so  mys- 
terious a  disregard  of  ordinary  motives  and  con- 
ventions, the  pageant  of  dreams?  Like  many 
other  things  which  befall  us  in  daily  life,  dreams  are 
so  familiar  a  fact,  that  we  often  forget  to  wonder 
at  the  marvelousness  of  it  all.  The  two  points 
about  dreams  which  seem  to  me  entirely  inexplicable 
are:  firstly,  that  they  are  so  much  occupied  with 
visual  impressions,  and  secondly,  that  though  they 
are  all  self-invented  and  self-produced,  they  yet 
contrive  to  strike  upon  the  mind  with  a  marvelous 
freshness  of  emotion  and  surprise.  Let  us  take 
these  two  points  a  little  more  in  detail. 

When  one  awakes  from  a  vivid  dream  one  gen- 
15^ 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

erally  has  the  impression  of  a  scene  of  some  kind, 
which  has  been  mainly  received  through  the  medium 
of  the  eye.  I  suppose  that  this  varies  with  differ- 
ent people,  but  my  own  dreams  are  rather  sharply 
divided  into  certain  classes.  I  am  oftenest  a  silent 
spectator  of  landscapes  of  ineffable  beauty,  such 
as  a  great  river,  as  blue  as  sapphire,  rolling 
majestically  down  between  vast  sandstone  cliffs, 
or  among  wooded  hills,  piled  thick  with  trees  rich 
in  blossom;  or  I  see  stately  buildings  crowded  to- 
gether among  woodlands,  with  long  carved  fronts 
of  stone  and  airy  towers.  These  dreams  are 
peculiarly  uplifting  and  stimulating,  and  I  wake 
from  them  with  an  extraordinary  sense  of  beauty 
and  wonder;  or  else  I  see  from  some  window  or 
balcony  a  great  ceremony  of  some  quite  unintelli- 
gible kind  proceeding,  a  procession  with  richly 
dressed  persons  walking  or  riding,  or  a  religious 
pomp  taking  place  in  a  dim  pillared  interior.  All 
such  dreams  pass  by  in  absolute  silence.  I  have 
no  idea  where  I  am,  nor  what  is  happening,  nor 
am  I  curious  to  know.  No  voice  is  upraised,  and 
there  is  no  one  at  hand  to  converse  with. 

•Then  again  there  are  dreams  of  which  the  sub- 
stance is  animated  and  vivid  conversation.     I  have 
154 


Dreams 

long  and  confidential  talks  with  people  like  the 
Pope  or  the  Tsar  of  Russia.  They  ask  my 
advice,  they  quote  my  books,  and  I  am  surprised 
to  find  them  so  familiar  and  accessible.  Or  I  am 
in  a  strange  house  with  an  unknown  party  of 
guests,  and  person  after  person  comes  up  to  tell  me 
all  kinds  of  interesting  facts  and  details.  Or  else, 
as  often  happens  to  me,  I  meet  people  long  since 
dead;  I  dream  constantly,  for  instance,  about  my 
father.  I  see  him  by  chance  at  a  railway  station, 
we  congratulate  ourselves  upon  the  happy  acci- 
dent of  meeting;  he  takes  my  arm,  he  talks  smil- 
ingly and  indulgently;  and  the  only  way  in  which 
the  knowledge  that  he  is  dead  affects  the  dream  is 
that  I  feel  bewildered  at  having  seen  so  little  of  him 
of  late,  and  even  ask  him  where  he  has  been  for  so 
long  that  we  have  not  met  oftener. 

Very  occasionally  I  hear  music  in  a  dream.  I 
well  remember  hearing  four  musicians  with  little 
instruments  like  silver  flutes  play  a  quartet  of  in- 
finite sweetness;  but  most  of  my  adventures  take 
place  either  among  fine  landscapes  or  in  familiar 
conversation. 

At  one  time,  as  a  child,  I  had  an  often  repeated 
dream.  We  were  then  living  in  an  old  house  at 
155 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Lincoln,  called  the  Chancery.  It  was  a  large 
rambling  place,  with  some  interesting  medieval 
features,  such  as  a  stone  winding  staircase,  a 
wooden  Tudor  screen,  built  into  a  wall,  and 
formerly  belonging  to  the  chapel  of  the  house. 
There  were,  moreover,  certain  quite  unaccountable 
spaces,  where  the  external  measurements  of  pass- 
ages did  not  correspond  with  the  measurement  of 
rooms  within.  This  fact  excited  our  childish  im- 
agination, and  probably  was  the  origin  of  the 
dream. 

It  always  began  in  the  same  way.  I  would  ap- 
pear to  be  descending  a  staircase  which  led  up  into 
a  lobby,  and  would  find  that  a  certain  step  rattled 
as  I  trode  upon  it.  Upon  examination  the  step 
proved  to  be  hinged,  and  on  opening  it,  the 
head  of  a  staircase  appeared,  leading  downwards. 
Though,  as  I  say,  the  dream  was  often  repeated,  it 
was  always  with  the  same  shock  of  surprise  that  I 
made  the  discovery.  I  used  to  squeeze  in  through 
the  opening,  close  the  step  behind  me,  and  go  down 
the  stairs;  the  place  was  dimly  lighted  with  some 
artificial  light,  the  source  of  which  I  could  never 
discover.  At  the  bottom  a  large  vaulted  room  was 
visible,  of  great  extent,  fitted  with  iron-barred 
166 


Dreams 

stalls,  as  in  a  stable.  These  stalls  were  tenanted 
by  animals;  there  were  dogs,  tigers,  and  lions. 
They  were  all  very  tame,  and  delighted  to  see  me. 
I  used  to  go  into  the  stalls  one  by  one,  feed  and 
play  with  the  animals,  and  enjoy  myself  very  much. 
There  was  never  any  custodian  to  be  seen,  and  it 
never  occurred  to  me  to  wonder  how  the  animals 
had  got  there,  nor  to  whom  they  belonged.  After 
spending  a  long  time  with  my  menagerie,  I  used  to 
return;  and  the  only  thing  that  seemed  of  impor- 
tance to  me  was  that  I  should  not  be  seen  leaving 
the  place.  I  used  to  raise  the  step  cautiously  and 
listen,  so  as  to  be  sure  that  there  was  no  one 
about ;  generally  in  the  dream  some  one  came  down 
the  stairs  over  my  head;  and  I  then  waited, 
crouched  below,  with  a  sense  of  delightful  adven- 
ture, until  the  person  had  passed  by,  when  I  cau- 
tiously extricated  myself.  This  dream  became 
quite  familiar  to  me,  so  that  I  used  to  hope  in  my 
mind,  on  going  to  bed,  that  I  might  be  about  to  see 
the  animals ;  but  I  was  often  disappointed,  and 
dreamed  of  other  things.  This  dream  visited  me 
at  irregular  intervals  for  I  should  say  about  two 
or  three  years,  and  then  I  had  it  no  more;  but 
the  singular  fact  about  it  was  that  it  always  came 
157 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

with  the  same  sense  of  wonder  and  delight,  and 
while  actually  dreaming  it,  I  never  realized  that  I 
had  seen  it  before. 

The  only  other  tendency  to  a  recurring  dream 
that  I  have  ever  noticed  was  in  the  course  of  the 
long  illness  of  which  I  have  written  elsewhere ;  my 
dreams  were  invariably  pleasant  and  agreeable  at 
that  time;  but  I  constantly  had  the  experience  in 
the  course  of  them  of  seeing  something  of  a  pro- 
found blackness.  Sometimes  it  was  a  man  in  a 
cloak,  sometimes  an  open  door  with  an  intensely 
black  space  within,  sometimes  a  bird,  like  a  raven 
or  a  crow;  oftenest  of  all  it  took  the  shape  of  a 
small  black  cubical  box,  which  lay  on  a  table,  with- 
out any  apparent  lid  or  means  of  opening  it. 
This  I  used  to  take  up  in  my  hands,  and  find  it 
very  heavy ;  but  the  predominance  of  some  intensely 
black  object,  which  I  have  never  experienced  before 
or  since,  was  too  marked  to  be  a  mere  coincidence ; 
and  I  have  little  doubt  that  it  was  some  obscure 
symptom  of  my  condition,  and  had  some  definite 
physical  cause.  Indeed,  at  the  same  time,  I  was 
occasionally  aware  of  the  presence  of  something 
black  in  waking  hours,  not  a  thing  definitely  seen, 
but  existing  dimly  in  a  visual  cell.  After  I  re- 
158 


Dreams 

covered,  this  left  me,  and  I  have  never  seen  it  since. 

These  are  the  more  coherent  kind  of  dreams ;  but 
there  is  another  kind  of  a  vaguely  anxious  charac- 
ter, which  consist  of  endless  attempts  to  catch 
trains,  or  to  fulfil  social  engagements,  and  are  full 
of  hurry  and  dismay.  Or  one  dreams  that  one  has 
been  condemned  to  death  for  some  unknown  offense, 
and  the  time  draws  near;  some  little  while  ago  I 
spent  the  night  under  these  circumstances  inter- 
viewing different  members  of  the  Government  in  a 
vain  attempt  to  discover  the  reasons  for  my  con- 
demnation; they  could  none  of  them  give  me  a 
specific  account  of  the  affair,  and  could  only 
politely  deplore  that  it  was  necessary  to  make  an 
example.  "  Depend  upon  it,"  said  Mr.  Lloyd- 
George  to  me,  "  substantial  justice  will  be  done!  " 
"  But  that  is  no  consolation  to  me,"  I  said.  "  No," 
he  replied  kindly,  "  it  would  hardly  amount  to 
that ! " 

But  out  of  all  this  there  emerges  the  fact  that 
after  a  vivid  dream,  one's  memory  is  full  of  pic- 
tures of  things  seen  quite  as  distinctly,  indeed  often 
more  distinctly,  than  in  real  life.  I  have  a  clearer 
recollection  of  certain  dream-landscapes  than  I 
have  of  many  scenes  actually  beheld  with  the  eye ; 
159 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

and  this  sets  me  wondering  how  the  effect  is  brought 
about,  and  how  the  memory  is  enabled  to  store  what 
appears  to  be  a  visual  impression,  by  some  reflex 
action  of  the  nerves  of  sight. 

Then  there  is  the  second  point,  that  of  the  lively 
emotions  stirred  by  dreams.  It  would  really  ap- 
pear that  there  must  be  two  distinct  personalities 
at  work,  without  any  connection  between  them,  one 
unconsciously  inventing  and  the  other  consciously 
observing.  I  dreamed  not  long  ago  that  I  was 
walking  beside  the  lake  at  Riseholme,  the  former 
palace  of  the  bishops  of  Lincoln,  where  I  often  went 
as  a  child.  I  saw  that  the  level  of  the  lake  had 
sunk,  and  that  there  was  a  great  bank  of  shingle 
between  the  water  and  the  shore,  on  which  I  pro- 
ceeded to  pace.  I  was  attracted  by  something 
sticking  out  of  the  bank,  and  on  going  up  to  it,  I 
saw  that  it  was  the  base  of  a  curious  metal  cup.  I 
pulled  it  out  and  saw  that  I  had  found  a  great 
golden  chalice,  much  dimmed  with  age  and  weather. 
Then  I  saw  that  further  in  the  bank  there  were  a 
number  of  cups,  patens,  candlesticks,  flagons,  of 
great  antiquity  and  beauty.  I  then  recollected 
that  I  had  heard  as  a  child  (this  was  wholly 
imaginary,  of  course)  that  there  had  once  been  a 
160 


Dreams 

great  robbery  of  cathedral  plate  at  Lincoln,  and 
that  one  of  the  bishops  had  been  vaguely  suspected 
of  being  concerned  in  it ;  and  I  saw  at  once  that  I 
had  stumbled  on  the  hoard,  stowed  there  no  doubt 
by  guilty  episcopal  hands  —  I  even  recollected  the 
name  of  the  bishop  concerned. 

Now  as  a  matter  of  fact  one  part  of  my  mind 
must  have  been  ahead  inventing  this  story,  while  the 
other  part  of  the  mind  was  apprehending  it  with 
astonishment  and  excitement.  Yet  the  observant 
part  of  the  mind  was  utterly  unaware  of  the  fact 
that  I  was  myself  originating  it  all.  And  the  only 
natural  inference  would  seem  to  be  that  there  is  a 
real  duality  of  mind  at  work. 

For  when  one  is  composing  a  story,  in  ordinary 
waking  moments,  one  has  the  sense  that  one  is  in- 
venting and  controlling  the  incidents.  In  dreams 
this  sense  of  proprietorship  is  utterly  lost;  one 
seems  to  have  no  power  over  the  inventive  part  of 
the  mind;  one  can  only  helplessly  follow  its  lead, 
and  be  amazed  at  its  creations.  And  yet,  some- 
times, in  a  dream  of  tragic  intensity,  as  one  begins 
to  awake,  a  third  person  seems  to  intervene,  and 
says  reassuringly  that  it  is  only  a  dream.  This 
intervention  seems  to  disconcert  the  inventor,  who 
161 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

then  promptly  retires,  while  it  brings  sudden  relief 
to  the  timid  and  frightened  observer.  It  would 
seem  then  that  the  rational  self  reasserts  itself,  and 
that  the  two  personalities  one  of  which  has  been 
creating  and  the  other  observing,  come  in  like  dogs 
to  heel. 

Another  very  curious  part  of  dreams  is  that  they 
concern  themselves  so  very  little  with  the  current 
thoughts  of  life.  My  dreams  are  mostly  composed, 
as  I  have  said,  of  landscapes,  ceremonies,  conversa- 
tions, sensational  adventures,  muddling*  engage- 
ments. When  I  was  a  schoolmaster,  I  seldom 
dreamed  of  school;  now  that  I  am  no  longer  a 
schoolmaster,  I  do  sometimes  dream  of  school,  of 
trying  to  keep  order  in  immense  classrooms,  or 
hurrying  about  in  search  of  my  form.  When  I 
had  my  long  and  dreary  illness,  lasting  for  two 
years,  I  invariably  had  happy  dreams.  Now  that 
I  am  well  again,  I  often  have  dreams  of  causeless 
and  poignant  melancholy.  It  is  the  rarest  thing 
in  the  world  for  me  to  be  able  to  connect  my  dreams 
with  anything  which  has  recently  happened ;  I  can- 
not say  that  marvelous  landscapes,  ceremonies, 
conversations  with  exalted  personages,  sensational 
incidents,  play  any  considerable  part  in  my  life; 
162 


Dreams 

and  yet  these  are  the  constituent  elements  in  my 
dreams.  The  scientific  students  of  psychology  say 
that  the  principal  stuff  of  dreams  seems  to  be  fur- 
nished by  the  early  experience  of  life;  and  when 
they  are  dealing  with  mental  ailments,  they  say 
that  delusions  and  obsessions  are  often  explained 
by  the  study  of  the  dreams  of  diseased  brains, 
which  point  as  a  rule  either  to  some  unfulfilled 
desire,  or  to  some  severe  nervous  shock  sustained  in 
childhood.  But  I  cannot  discern  any  predominant 
cause  of  my  own  elaborate  visions ;  the  only  physi- 
cal cause  which  seems  to  me  to  be  very  active  in 
producing  dreams  is  if  I  am  either  too  hot  or  too 
cold  in  bed.  A  sudden  change  of  temperature  in 
the  night  is  the  one  thing  which  seems  to  me  quite 
certain  to  produce  a  great  crop  of  dreams. 

Another  very  curious  fact  about  my  dreams  is 
that  I  am  wholly  deserted  by  any  moral  sense.  I 
have  stolen  interesting  objects,  I  have  even  killed 
people  in  dreams,  without  adequate  cause ;  but  I  am 
then  entirely  devoid  of  remorse,  and  only  anxious 
to  escape  detection.  I  have  never  felt  anything 
of  the  nature  of  shame  or  regret  in  a  dream.  I 
find  myself  anxious  indeed,  but  fertile  in  expedients 
for  escaping  unscathed.  On  the  other  hand,  cer- 
163 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

tain  emotions  are  very  active  in  dreams.  I  some- 
times appear  to  go  with  a  brother  or  sister  through 
the  rooms  or  gardens  of  a  house,  which  on  awaking 
proves  to  be  wholly  imaginary,  and  recall  with  ray 
companion  all  sorts  of  pathetic  and  delightful  inci- 
dents of  childhood  which  seem  to  have  taken  place 
there. 

Again,  though  much  of  my  life  is  given  to 
writing,  I  hardly  ever  find  myself  composing  any- 
thing in  a  dream.  Once  I  wrote  a  poem  in  my 
sleep,  a  curious  Elizabethan  lyric,  which  may  be 
found  in  the  Oxford  Book  of  Verse,  called  "  The 
Phoenix."  It  is  not  the  sort  of  thing  that  I  have 
ever  written  before  or  since.  It  came  to  me  on  the 
night  before  my  birthday,  in  1891,  I  think,  when 
I  was  staying  with  a  friend  at  the  Dun  Bull  Hotel, 
by  Hawes  Water  in  Westmorland.  I  scribbled  the 
lyric  down  on  awaking.  I  afterwards  added  a 
verse,  thinking  the  poem  incomplete.  I  published 
it  in  a  book  of  poems,  and  showed  the  proof  to  a 
friend,  who  said  to  me,  pointing  to  the  added 
stanza :  "  Ah,  you  must  omit  that  stanza  —  it  is 
quite  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest  of  the  poem ! " 

But  this  is  a  quite  unique  experience,  except  that 
I  once  dreamed  I  was  present  at  a  confirmation 
164 


Dreams 

service,  at  which  a  very  singular  hymn  was  sung, 
which  I  recollected  on  waking,  and  which  is  far  too 
grotesque  to  write  down,  being  addressed,  as  it  was, 
to  the  bishop  who  was  to  perform  the  rite.  At  the 
time,  however,  it  seemed  to  me  both  moving  and 
appropriate. 

It  is  often  said  that  dreams  only  take  place 
either  when  one  is  just  going  to  sleep  or  beginning 
to  awake.  But  that  is  not  my  experience.  I  have 
occasionally  been  awakened  suddenly  by  some  loud 
sound,  and  on  those  occasions  I  have  come  out  of 
dreams  of  an  intensity  and  vividness  that  I  have 
never  known  equaled.  Neither  is  it  true  in  my 
experience  that  dreamful  sleep  is  unrefreshing.  I 
should  say  it  was  rather  the  other  way.  Pro- 
found and  heavy  sleep  is  generally  to  me  a  sign 
that  I  am  not  very  well ;  but  a  sleep  full  of  happy 
and  interesting  dreams  is  generally  succeeded  by  a 
feeling  of  freshness  and  gaiety,  as  if  one  had  been 
both  rested  and  well  entertained. 

These  are  only  a  few  scattered  personal  ex- 
periences, and  I  have  no  philosophy  of  dreams  to 
suggest.  It  is  in  my  case  an  inherited  power. 
My  father  was  the  most  vivid  and  persistent 
dreamer  I  have  ever  met,  and  his  dreams  had  a 
165 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

quality  of  unexpectedness  and  interest  of  which  I 
have  never  known  the  like.  The  dream  of  his, 
which  I  have  told  in  his  biography,  of  the  finding 
of  the  grave  of  the  horse  of  Titus  Gates,  seems  to 
me  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  pieces  of  inven- 
tion I  have  ever  heard,  because  of  the  conversation 
which  took  place  before  he  realized  what  the  slab 
actually  was. 

He  dreamed  that  he  was  standing  in  Westminster 
Abbey  with  Dean  Stanley,  looking  at  a  small 
cracked  slab  of  slate  with  letters  on  it.  "  We  've 
found  it,"  said  Stanley.  "  Yes,"  said  my  father, 
"  and  how  do  you  account  for  it  ?  "  "  Why,"  said 
Stanley,  "  I  suppose  it  is  intended  to  commemorate 
the  fact  that  the  animal  innocence  was  not  affected 
by  the  villainies  of  the  master."  "  Of  course ! " 
said  my  father,  who  was  still  quite  unaware  what 
the  inscription  referred  to.  He  then  saw  on  the 
slab  the  letters  ITI  CAPITANI,  and  knew  that  the 
stone  was  one  that  had  marked  the  grave  of  Titus 
Gates'  horse,  and  that  the  whole  inscription  must 
have  been  EQUUS  TITI  CAPITANI,— "  The 
horse  of  Titus  the  Captain," —  the  "  Captain  "  re- 
ferring to  the  fact  that  my  father  then  recollected 
that  Titus  Gates  had  been  a  Train-band  Captain. 
166 


Dreams 

My  only  really  remarkable  dream  containing  a 
presentiment  or  rather  a  clairvoyance  of  a  singular 
kind,  hardly  explicable  as  a  mere  coincidence,  has 
occurred  to  me  since  I  began  this  paper. 

On  the  night  of  December  8,  1914,  I  dreamed 
that  I  was  walking  along  a  country  road,  between 
hedges.  To  the  left  was  a  little  country  house,  in 
a  park.  I  was  proposing  to  call  there,  to  see,  I 
thought,  an  old  friend  of  mine,  Miss  Adie  Browne, 
who  has  been  dead  for  some  years,  though  in  my 
dream  I  thought  of  her  as  alive. 

I  came  up  with  four  people,  walking  along^  the 
road  in  the  same  direction  as  myself.  There  was 
an  elderly  man,  a  younger  man,  red-haired,  walking 
very  lightly,  in  knickerbockers,  and  two  boys  whom 
I  took  to  be  the  sons  of  the  younger  man.  I  recog- 
nized the  elder  man  as  a  friend,  though  I  cannot 
now  remember  who  he  appeared  to  be.  He  nodded 
and  smiled  to  me,  and  I  j  oined  the  party.  Just  as 
I  did  so,  the  younger  man  said,  "  I  am  going  to  call 
on  a  lady,  an  elderly  cousin  of  mine,  who  lives 
here ! "  He  said  this  to  his  companions,  not  to 
me,  and  I  became  aware  that  he  was  speaking  of 
Miss  Adie  Browne.  The  older  man  said  to  me, 
**You  have  not  been  introduced,"  and  then,  pre- 
167 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

senting  the  younger  man,  he  said,  "  This  is  Lord 
Radstock ! "  We  shook  hands  and  I  said,  "  Do 
you  know,  I  am  very  much  surprised ;  I  understood 
Lord  Radstock  to  be  a  much  older  man !  " 

I  do  not  remember  any  more  of  the  dream ;  but 
it  had  been  very  vivid,  and  when  I  was  called,  I 
went  over  it  in  my  mind.  A  few  minutes  later,  the 
"  Times  "  of  December  9  was  brought  to  my  bed- 
room, and  opening  it,  I  saw  the  sudden  death  of 
Lord  Radstock  announced.  I  had  not  known  that 
he  was  ill,  and  indeed  had  never  thought  of  him 
for  years ;  but  the  strange  thing  is  this,  that  he  was 
a  cousin  of  Miss  Adie  Browne's,  and  she  used  to 
tell  me  interesting  stories  about  him.  I  do  not 
suppose  that  since  her  death  I  have  ever  heard  his 
name  mentioned,  and  I  had  never  met  him.  So 
that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  when  I  dreamed  my 
dream,  the  old  Lord  Radstock  was  dead,  and  his 
son,  who  is  a  man  of  fifty-four,  was  the  new  Lord 
Radstock.  The  man  I  saw  in  my  dream  was  not, 
I  should  say,  more  than  about  forty-five;  but  I 
remember  little  of  him,  except  that  he  had  red 
hair. 

I  do  not  take  in  an  evening  paper,  but  I  do  not 
think  there  was  any  announcement  of  Lord  Rad- 
168 


Dreams 

stock's  illness,  on  the  previous  day;  in  fact  his 
death  seems  to  have  been  quite  sudden  and  unex- 
pected. Apart  from  coincidence,  the  rational  ex- 
planation might  be  that  my  mind  was  in  some  sort 
of  telepathic  communication  with  that  of  my  old 
and  dear  friend  Miss  Adie  Browne,  who  is  indeed 
often  in  my  mind,  and  one  would  also  have  to  pre- 
suppose that  her  spirit  was  likewise  aware  of  her 
cousin  Lord  Radstock's  death.  I  do  not  advance 
this  as  the  only  explanation,  but  it  seems  to  me  a 
not  impossible  one  of  a  mysterious  affair. 

My  conclusion,  such  as  it  is,  would  be  that  the 
rational  and  moral  faculties  are  in  suspense  in 
dreams,  and  that  it  is  a  wholly  primitive  part  of 
one's  essence  that  is  at  work.  The  creative  power 
seems  to  be  very  strong,  and  to  have  a  vigorous 
faculty  of  combining  and  exaggerating  the  ma- 
terials of  memory ;  but  it  deals  mainly  with  rather 
childish  emotions,  with  shapes  and  colors,  with 
impressive  and  distinguished  people,  with  things 
marvelous  and  sensational,  with  troublesome  and 
perplexed  adventures.  It  does  not  go  far  in  search 
of  motives ;  in  the  train-catching  dreams,  for  in- 
stance, I  never  know  exactly  where  I  am  going,  or 
what  is  the  object  of  my  journey ;  in  the  ceremonial 
169 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

dreams,  I  seldom  have  any  notion  of  what  is  being 
celebrated. 

But  what  I  cannot  in  the  least  understand  is  the 
complete  withdrawal  of  consciousness  from  the  in- 
ventive part  of  the  mind,  especially  when  the  ob- 
servant part  is  so  eagerly  and  alertly  aware  of  all 
that  is  happening.  Moreover,  I  can  never  under- 
stand the  curious  way  in  which  dream-experiences, 
so  vivid  at  the  time,  melt  away  upon  awakening. 
If  one  rehearses  a  dream  in  memory  the  moment  one 
awakes,  it  becomes  a  very  distinct  affair.  If  one 
does  not  do  this,  it  fades  swiftly,  and  though  one 
has  a  vague  sense  of  rich  adventures,  half  an  hour 
later  there  seems  to  be  no  power  whatever  of  re- 
covering them. 

Strangest  of  all,  the  inventive  power  in  dreams 
seems  to  have  a  range  and  an  intensity  which  does 
not  exist  when  one  is  awake.  I  have  not  the  slight- 
est power,  in  waking  life,  of  conceiving  and  visual- 
izing the  astonishing  landscapes  which  I  see  in 
dreams.  I  can  recall  actual  scenes  with  great  dis- 
tinctness, but  the  glowing  color  and  the  prodigious 
forms  of  my  landscape  visions  are  wholly  beyond 
my  power  of  thought. 

Lastly,  I  have  never  had  any  dream  of  any  real 
170 


Dreams 

or  vital  significance,  any  warning  or  presentiment, 
anything  which  bore  in  the  least  degree  upon  the 
issues  of  life. 

There  is  a  beautiful  passage  in  the  Purgatorio 
of  Dante  about  the  dawn ;  he  writes 

In  that  hour 
When  near  the  dawn  the  swallow  her  sad  song, 
Haply  remembering  ancient  grief,  renews; 
And  when  our  minds,  more  wanderers  from  the  flesh 
And  less  by  thought  restrained,  are,  as  't  were,  full 
Of  holy  divination  in  their  dreams. 

I  suppose  that  it  would  be  possible  to  interpret 
one's  dreams  symbolically ;  but  in  my  own  case,  my 
dream  experiences  all  seem  to  belong  to  a  wholly 
different  person  from  myself,  a  light-hearted,  child- 
ish, careless  creature,  full  of  animation  and  in- 
quisitiveness,  buoyant  and  thoughtless,  content  to 
look  neither  forwards  nor  backwards,  wholly  with- 
out responsibility  or  intelligence,  just  borne  along 
by  the  pleasure  of  the  moment,  perfectly  harmless 
and  friendly,  as  a  rule,  a  sort  of  cheerful  butterfly. 
That  is  not  in  the  least  my  waking  temperament; 
but  it  fills  me  sometimes  with  an  uneasy  suspicion 
that  it  is  more  like  myself  than  I  know. 


171 


THE  VISITANT 


THE  VISITANT 

1AM  going  to  try  to  put  into  words  a  very  sin- 
gular and  very  elusive  experience  which  visits 
me  not  infrequently.  I  cannot  say  when  it  began, 
but  I  first  became  aware  of  it  about  four  years 
ago. 

It  takes  the  form  of  an  instantaneous  mental 
vision,  not  very  distinct  but  still  not  to  be  mis- 
taken for  anything  else,  of  two  people,  a  husband 
and  wife,  who  are  living  somewhere  in  a  large 
newly  built  house.  The  husband  is  a  man  of,  I 
suppose,  about  forty,  the  wife  is  a  trifle  younger, 
and  they  are  childless.  The  husband  is  an  active, 
well-built  man  with  light,  almost  golden  hair, 
rather  coarse  in  texture,  and  with  a  pointed  beard 
of  the  same  hue.  He  has  fine,  clean-cut,  muscular 
hands,  and  he  wears,  as  I  see  him,  a  rough,  rather 
shabby  suit  of  light,  homespun  cloth.  The  wife 
is  of  fair  complexion,  a  beautiful  woman,  with 
175 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

brown  hair,  and  dressed,  I  think,  in  a  very  simple 
and  rather  peculiar  dress.  They  are  people  of 
high  principle,  wealthy,  and  with  cultivated  tastes. 
They  care  for  music  and  books  and  art.  The  hus- 
band has  no  profession.  They  live  in  a  wide,  well- 
wooded  landscape,  I  am  inclined  to  think  in  Sus- 
sex, in  a  newly  built  house,  as  I  have  said,  of  white 
plaster  and  timber,  tiled,  with  many  gables  and 
with  two  large,  bow-windowed  rooms,  rather  low, 
the  big  mulhoned  oriels  of  which,  with  leaded  roofs, 
are  a  rather  conspicuous  feature  of  the  house. 
The  house  stands  on  a  slightly  rising  ground,  in 
a  park-like  demesne  of  a  few  acres,  well  timbered, 
and  with  open  paddocks  of  grass.  The  house  is 
approached  by  a  drive  from  the  main  road,  with 
two  big  gateposts  of  brick,  and  a  white  gate  be- 
tween. To  the  right  of  the  house  among  the  trees 
is  the  louver  of  a  stable.  There  is  a  terrace  just 
in  front  of  the  house,  full  of  flowers,  with  a  low 
brick  wall  in  front  of  it  separating  it  from  the 
field.  I  see  the  house  and  its  surroundings  more 
clearly  than  I  see  the  figures  themselves. 

I  cannot  see  the  interior  of  the  house  at  all 
clearly,  with  the  exception  of  one  room.     I  do  not 
know  where  the  front  door  is,  nor  have  I  ever  seen 
176 


The  Visitant 

a.ny  of  the  upper  rooms.  The  one  exception  is  a 
big  room  on  the  right  of  the  house  as  one  looks 
at  it  from  the  main  road.  This  room  I  see  with 
great  distinctness.  It  is  large  and  low,  papered 
with  a  white  paper  and  with  a  parquetry  floor, 
designed  for  a  music  room.  There  is  a  grand 
piano,  but  what  I  see  most  clearly  are  a  good 
many  books,  rather  inconveniently  placed  in  low 
white  bookcases  which  run  round  most  of  the  room, 
under  the  windows,  with  three  shelves  in  each.  It 
seems  to  me  to  be  a  bad  arrangement,  because  it 
would  be  necessary  to  stoop  down  so  much  for 
the  books,  but  I  do  not  think  that  there  is  much 
reading  done  in  the  room.  There  are  several  low 
armchairs  draped  in  a  highly  colored  chintz  with 
a  white  ground;  there  are  pictures  on  the  walls 
but  I  cannot  see  them  distinctly.  I  think  they 
are  water  colors.  The  curtains  are  of  a  very  pe- 
culiar and  bright  blue.  A  low  window-seat  runs 
round  the  oriel,  with  cushions  of  the  same  blue. 
It  is  in  this  room  only  that  I  see  the  two  people, 
always  together;  and  I  have  never  seen  any  one 
else  in  the  house.  They  are  seen  in  certain  definite 
positions,  oftenest  standing  together  looking  out 
of  the  window,  which  must  face  the  west,  because 
177 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

I  see  the  sunset  out  of  it.  As  a  rule,  the  woman's 
hand  is  passed  through  the  man's  arm. 

The  vision  simply  flashes  across  my  mind  like 
a  picture,  whatever  I  am  doing  at  the  time. 
Sometimes  I  see  it  several  times  in  a  week,  some- 
times not  for  weeks  together.  I  should  recognize 
the  house  in  a  moment  if  I  saw  it ;  I  do  not  think  I 
should  recognize  the  people.  I  cannot  see  the 
shapes  of  their  features  or  their  expressions,  but 
I  can  see  the  bloom  on  the  wife's  cheek  and  its  pure 
outline. 

To  the  best  of  my  knowledge  I  have  never  seen 
either  the  people  or  the  house  in  real  life ;  and  yet 
I  have  strongly  the  sense  that  it  is  a  real  house 
and  that  the  people  are  real.  It  does  not  seem 
to  me  like  a  mere  imagination,  because  it  comes  too 
distinctly  and  too  accurately  for  that.  Nor  does 
it  seem  to  me  to  be  a  mere  combination  of  things 
which  I  have  seen.  The  curious  part  of  it  is  that 
some  parts  of  the  vision  are  absolutely  clear  — 
thus  I  can  see  the  very  texture  of  the  smooth 
plaster  of  the  house,  and  the  oak  beams  inset ;  and 
I  can  also  see  the  fabric  of  the  man's  clothes  and 
the  color  of  his  hair ;  but,  however  much  I  interro- 
gate my  memory  or  my  fancy  about  other  details, 
178 


The  Visitant 

they  are  all  involved  in  a  sort  of  mist  which  I  can- 
not pierce.  It  is  this  which  convinces  me  of  the 
reality  of  the  house,  and  makes  me  believe  that  it 
is  not  imagination;  because,  if  it  were,  I  think  I 
should  have  enlarged  my  vision  of  the  whole;  but 
this  I  cannot  do.  There  is  a  door,  for  instance, 
in  the  music-room,  which  is  sometimes  open,  but 
even  so  I  cannot  see  anything  outside  in  the  hall 
or  passage  to  which  it  leads.  Moreover,  though  I 
can  recollect  the  visions  with  absolute  distinctness, 
I  cannot  evoke  them.  I  may  be  reading  or  writ- 
ing, and  I  suddenly  see  in  my  mind  the  house  across 
the  meadows ;  or  I  am  in  the  music-room,  and  the 
two  figures  are  standing  together  in  the  window. 

So  strongly  do  I  feel  the  actuality  of  it  all,  that 
if  this  book  should  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  people 
to  whom  the  vision  refers,  I  will  ask  them  to  com- 
municate with  me.  I  have  no  idea  what  their  past 
has  been,  but  I  know  their  characters  well.  The 
fact  that  they  have  no  children  is  a  sorrow  to 
them,  but  has  served  to  center  their  affections 
strongly  on  each  other.  The  husband  is  a  very 
tranquil  and  unaffected  man.  There  is  no  sort 
of  pose  about  his  life.  He  just  lives  as  he  likes 
best.  He  is  unambitious,  and  he  has  no  sense  of 
179 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

a  duty  owed  to  others.  But  this  is  not  coupled 
with  any  sense  of  contempt  or  aloofness  —  he  is 
invariably  kind  and  gentle.  He  is  an  intellectual 
man,  highly  trained  and  clear-minded.  The  wife 
has  less  knowledge  of  the  technique  of  artistic 
things,  but  a  very  fine,  natural,  critical  taste.  She 
cares,  however,  less  for  the  things  themselves  than 
because  her  husband  cares  for  them ;  but  I  do  not 
think  that  she  knows  this.  They  have  always  en- 
joyed good  health,  and  I  cannot  discern  that  they 
have  had  troubles  of  any  kind.  And  I  have  the 
strongest  sense  of  a  perfectly  natural  high-minded- 
ness  about  both,  a  healthy  instinct  for  what  is  right 
and  fine.  They  are  absolutely  without  meanness; 
and  they  are  entirely  free  from  any  sort  of  mor- 
bidity or  dreariness.  They  have  traveled  a  good 
deal,  but  they  now  seldom  leave  home;  they  de- 
signed and  built  their  own  house.  One  curious 
thing  is  that  I  have  never  heard  music  in  the  house, 
nor  have  I  ever  seen  them  reading,  and  yet  I  feel 
that  they  are  much  occupied  with  music  and  books. 
What  is  the  possible  explanation  of  this  curious 
vision?  I  have  sometimes  wondered  if  they  have 
been  brought  into  some  unconscious  rapport  with 
me  through  one  of  my  books.  It  seems  to  me  just 
180 


The  Visitant 

possible  that  when  I  have  seen  them  standing  to- 
gether there  may  be  some  phrase  in  one  of  my 
books  which  has  struck  them  and  which  they  are 
accustomed  to  remember;  and  I  think  it  may  be 
some  phrase  about  the  sunset,  because  it  is  at  sun- 
set that  I  generally  see  them.  But  this  does  not 
explain  my  vision  of  the  house,  because  I  have 
never  seen  either  of  them  outside  of  the  house, 
and  I  have  several  times  seen  the  music-room  with 
no  one  in  it;  how  does  the  vision  of  the  house, 
which  is  so  strangely  distinct,  come  to  me? 

They  inspire  me  with  a  great  feeling  of  respect 
and  friendship ;  the  vision  is  very  beautiful,  and  is 
always  attended  by  a  great  sense  of  pleasure.  I 
feel  that  it  does  me  good  in  some  obscure  way  to 
be  brought  into  touch  with  them.  Yet  I  can  never 
retain  my  hold  on  the  scene  for  more  than  an  in- 
stant; it  is  just  there  and  then  it  is  gone. 

It  is  a  very  strange  thing  to  be  conscious  of  two 
quite  distinct  personalities,  and  yet  without  any 
power  of  winding  myself  any  further  into  their 
thoughts.  There  seems  to  be  no  vital  contact.  I 
am  admitted,  as  it  were,  at  certain  times  to  a 
sight  of  the  place,  but  I  am  sure  that  there  is  no 
sort  of  volition  on  their  part  about  it;  I  do  not 
181 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

feel  that  their  thoughts  are  ever  bent  actually 
upon  me,  as  I  exist,  but  perhaps  upon  something 
connected  with  me. 

I  must  add  that,  though  I  am  a  great  dreamer 
at  night  and  have  always  at  all  times  a  strong 
power  of  mental  visualizations,  I  am  not  accus- 
tomed to  be  controlled  by  it,  but  rather  to  control 
it;  and  I  have  never  at  any  time  had  any  sort  of 
similar  vision,  of  a  thing  apart  from  memory  or 
fancy. 

I  do  believe  very  firmly  in  the  telepathic  fac- 
ulty. I  think  that  our  thoughts  are  much  af- 
fected both  consciously  and  unconsciously  by  the 
thoughts  of  others.  I  believe  thought  takes  place 
in  a  spiritual  medium  and  that  there  is  much  inter- 
lacing and  transference  of  thought.  I  have  never 
tried  any  definite  experiments  in  it,  but  I  have  had 
frequent  evidence  of  my  thoughts  being  affected 
by  the  thoughts  of  my  friends.  It  seems  to  me 
that  this  may  be  a  case  of  some  open  channel  of 
communication,  as  if  two  wires  had  become  in  some 
way  entangled.  The  whole  method  of  thought  is 
so  obscure  that  it  is  hard  to  say  under  what  con- 
ditions this  takes  place.  But  I  allow  myself  the 
happiness  of  believing  that  the  place  and  the  peo- 
182 


The  Visitant 

pie  of  whom  I  have  been  so  often  aware  are  real 
and  tangible  existences,  and  that  impressions  of 
things  unseen  and  unrecognized  by  me  have  passed 
into  my  brain,  so  that  some  secret  fellowship  has 
been  established.  It  would  be  a  great  joy  to  me 
if  this  could  be  definitely  established ;  and  I  am  not 
without  hopes  that  this  piece  of  writing  may  by 
some  happy  chance  be  the  bearer  of  definite  tidings 
to  two  people  whom  unseen  I  love,  and  whose 
thought  may  have  been  bent  aimlessly  perhaps  and 
indistinctly  upon  mine,  but  never  without  some 
touch  of  kinship  and  good  will. 


18S 


THAT  OTHER  ONE 


XI 
THAT  OTHER  ONE 

1AM  going  to  try,  in  these  few  pages,  to  draw 
water  out  of  a  deep  well  —  the  well  of  which 
William  Morris  wrote  as  the  "  Well  at  the  World's 
End."  I  shall  try  to  describe  a  very  strange  and 
secret  experience,  which  visits  me  rarely  and  at 
unequal  intervals ;  sometimes  for  weeks  together  not 
at  all,  sometimes  several  times  in  a  day.  When  it 
happens  it  is  not  strange  at  all,  nor  wonderful ;  the 
only  wonder  about  it  is  that  it  does  not  happen 
more  often,  because  it  seems  at  the  moment  to  be  the 
one  true  thing  in  a  world  of  vain  shadows ;  every- 
thing else  falls  away,  becomes  accidental  and  re- 
mote, like  the  lights,  let  me  say,  of  some  unknown 
town,  which  one  sees  as  one  travels  by  night  and  as 
one  twitches  aside  the  curtain  from  the  window  of 
a  railway-carriage,  in  a  sudden  interval  between 
two  profound  slumbers.  The  train  has  relaxed  its 
speed;  one  looks  out;  the  red  and  green  signal 
187 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

lamps  hang  high  in  the  air ;  and  one  glides  past  a 
sleeping  town,  the  lamps  burning  quietly  in  deserted 
streets ;  there  are  house-fronts  below,  in  a  long 
thoroughfare  suddenly  visible  from  end  to  end; 
above,  there  are  indeterminate  shadows,  the  glim- 
mering faces  of  high  towers ;  it  is  all  ghost-like  and 
mysterious  ;  one  only  knows  that  men  live  and  work 
there;  and  then  the  tides  of  slumber  flow  in  upon 
the  brain,  and  one  dives  thirstily  to  the  depths  of 
sleep. 

Before  I  say  more  about  it,  I  will  just  relate  my 
last  taste  of  the  mood.  I  was  walking  alone  in  the 
autumn  landscape;  bare  fields  about  me;  the  trees 
of  a  village  to  my  right  touched  sharply  with  gold 
and  russet  red;  some  white-gabled  cottages  clus- 
tered together,  and  there  was  a  tower  among  the 
trees ;  it  was  near  sunset,  and  the  sun  seemed  drag- 
ging behind  him  to  the  west  long  wisps  of  purple 
and  rusty  clouds  touched  with  fire ;  below  me  to  the 
left  a  stream  passing  slowly  among  rushes  and  wil- 
low-beds, all  beautiful  and  silent  and  remote.  I 
had  an  anxious  matter  in  my  mind,  a  thing  that 
required,  so  it  seemed  to  me,  careful  deliberation  to 
steer  a  right  course  among  many  motives  and  con- 
tingencies. I  had  gone  out  alone  to  think  it  over. 
188 


That  Other  One 

I  weighed  this  against  that,  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  I  was  headed  off  by  some  obstacle  whichever 
way  I  turned.  Whatever  I  desired  to  do  appeared 
to  be  disadvantageous  and  even  hurtful.  "  Yes," 
I  said  to  myself,  "  this  is  one  of  those  cases  where 
whatever  I  do,  I  shall  wish  I  had  done  differently ! 
I  see  no  way  out."  It  was  then  that  a  deeper  voice 
still  seemed  to  speak  in  me,  the  voice  of  something 
strong  and  quiet  and  even  indolent,  which  seemed 
half-amused,  half-vexed,  by  my  perturbation.  It 
said,  "  When  you  have  done  reasoning  and  ponder- 
ing, I  wiU  decide."  Then  I  thought  that  a  sort  of 
vague,  half-spoken,  half-dumb  dialogue  followed. 

"What  are  you?"  I  said.  "What  right  have 
you  to  interfere?  " 

The  other  voice  did  not  trouble  to  answer;  it 
only  seemed  to  laugh  a  lazy  laugh. 

"  I  am  trying  to  think  this  all  out,"  I  said,  half- 
ashamed,  half-vexed.  "  You  may  help  me  if  you 
will ;  I  am  perplexed  —  I  see  no  way  out  of  it  I " 

"  Oh,  you  may  think  as  much  as  you  like,"  said 
the  other  voice.     "  I  am  in  no  hurry,  I  can  wait." 

**  But  I  am  in  a  hurry,"  I  said,  "  and  I  cannot 
wait.  This  has  got  to  be  settled  somehow,  and 
without  delay." 

189 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

"  I  shall  decide  when  the  time  comes,"  said  the 
voice  to  me. 

"  Yes,  but  jou  do  not  understand,"  I  said,  feel- 
ing partly  irritated  and  partly  helpless.  "  There 
is  this  and  that,  there  is  so-and-so  to  be  considered, 
there  is  the  effect  on  these  other  persons  to  be 
weighed ;  there  is  my  own  position  too  —  I  must 
think  of  my  health  —  there  are  a  dozen  things  to 
be  taken  into  account."  . 

"  I  know,"  said  the  voice ;  "  I  do  not  mind  your 
balancing  all  these  things  if  you  wish.  I  shall  take 
no  heed  of  that!  I  repeat  that,  when  you  have 
finished  thinking  it  out,  I  shall  decide." 

"  Then  you  know  what  you  mean  to  do  ?  "  said  I, 
a  little  angered. 

"No,  I  do  not  know  just  yet,"  said  the  voice; 
''  but  I  shall  know  when  the  time  comes ;  there  will 
be  no  doubt  at  all." 

"  Then  I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  do  what  you 
decide?  "  I  said,  angry  but  impressed. 

"  Yes,  you  will  do  what  I  decide,"  said  the  voice ; 
*'  you  know  that  perfectly  well." 

"  Then  what  is  the  use  of  my  taking  all  this 
trouble .?  "  I  said. 

"  Oh,  you  may  just  as  well  look  into  it,"  said  the 
190 


That  Other  One 

voice ;  "  that  is  your  part !  You  are  only  my  serv- 
ant, after  all.  You  have  got  to  work  the  figures 
and  the  details  out,  and  then  I  shall  settle.  Of 
course  you  must  do  your  part  —  it  is  not  all 
wasted.  What  is  wasted  is  your  fretting  and 
fussing ! " 

"  I  am  anxious,"  I  said.  "  I  cannot  help  being 
anxious ! " 

"  That  is  a  pity !  "  said  the  voice.  "  It  hurts 
you  and  it  hurts  me  too,  in  a  way.  You  disturb 
me,  you  know ;  but  I  cannot  interfere  with  you ;  I 
must  wait." 

"  But  are  you  sure  you  will  do  right  .f^ "  I  said. 

"  I  shall  do  what  must  be  done,"  said  the  voice. 
"  If  you  mean,  shall  I  regret  my  choice,  that  is 
possible;  at  least  you  may  regret  it.  But  it  will 
not  have  been  a  mistake." 

I  was  puzzled  at  this,  and  for  a  time  the  voice 
was  silent,  so«  that  I  had  leisure  to  look  about  me. 
I  had  walked  some  way  while  the  dialogue  went  on, 
and  I  was  now  by  the  stream,  which  ran  full  and 
cold  into  a  pool  beside  the  bridge,  a  pool  like  a 
clouded  jewel.  How  beautiful  it  was!  .  .  .  The 
old  thoughts  began  again,  the  old  perplexities. 
"  If  he  says  that,"  I  said  to  myself,  thinking  of  an 
191 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

opponent  of  my  plan,  "  then  I  must  be  prepared 
with  an  answer  —  it  is  a  weak  point  in  my  case; 
perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  write ;  one  says  what 
one  thinks ;  not  what  one  means  to  say.  .  .  ." 

"  Still  at  work?  "  said  the  voice.  "  You  are  hav- 
ing a  very  uncomfortable  time  over  there.  I  am 
sorry  for  that!  Yet  I  cannot  think  why  you  do 
not  understand ! " 

"  What  are  you  ?  "  I  said  impatiently. 

There  was  no  answer  to  that. 

"  You  seem  very  strong  and  patient !  "  I  said  at 
last.  "  I  think  I  rather  like  you,  and  I  am  sure 
that  I  trust  you ;  but  you  irritate  me,  and  you  will 
not  explain.  Cannot  you  help  me  a  little?  You 
seem  to  me  to  be  out  of  sight  —  the  other  side 
of  a  wall.  Cannot  you  break  it  down  or  look 
over  ?  " 

*'  You  would  not  like  that,"  said  the  voice ;  "  it 
would  be  inconvenient,  even  painful ;  it  would  upset 
your  plans  very  much.  Tell  me  —  you  like  life, 
do  you  not?  " 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  I  like  life  —  at  least  I  am  very 
much  interested  in  it,  I  do  not  feel  sure  if  I  like 
it;  I  think  you  know  that  better  than  I  do.  Tell 
me,  do  I  like  it?" 

19^ 


That  Other  One 

"  Yes,"  said  the  voice ;  "  at  least  I  do.  You 
have  guessed  right  for  once;  it  matters  more  what 
I  like  than  what  you  like.  You  see,  I  believe  in 
God,  for  one  thing." 

"  So  do  I,"  I  said  eagerly.  "  I  have  reached 
that  point !  I  am  sure  He  is  there.  It  is  largely 
a  question  of  argument,  and  I  have  really  no  doubt, 
no  doubt  at  all.  There  are  difficulties  of  course  — 
difficulties  about  personality  and  intention;  and 
then  there  is  the  origin  of  evil  —  I  have  thought 
much  about  that,  and  I  have  arrived  at  a  solution ; 
it  is  this.  I  can  explain  it  best  by  an  anal- 
ogy. .  .  .'* 

There  came  a  laugh  from  the  other  side  of  the 
wall,  not  a  scornful  laugh  or  an  idle  laugh,  but  a 
laugh  kind  and  compassionate,  like  a  father  with 
a  child  on  his  knee ;  and  the  voice  said,  "  I  have  seen 
Him  —  I  see  Him!  He  is  here  all  about  us,  and 
He  is  yonder.  He  is  not  coming  to  meet  us,  as  you 
think.  .  .  ,  Dear  me,  how  young  you  must  be.  .  .  . 
I  had  forgotten." 

This  struck  me  dumb  for  an  instant ;  then  I  said, 
"  You  frighten  me !  Who  are  you,  what  are  you, 
.  ,  .  where  are  you  ?  " 

And  then  the  voice  said,  in  a  tone  of  the  deepest 
193 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

and  sweetest  love,  as  if  surprised  and  a  little  pained, 
"My  child!" 

And  then  I  heard  it  no  more ;  and  I  went  back  to 
my  cares  and  anxieties.  But  it  was  as  the  voice 
had  said,  and  when  the  time  came  to  decide,  I  had 
no  doubt  at  all  what  to  do. 

Now  I  have  told  all  this  in  the  nearest  and 
simplest  words  that  I  can  find.  I  have  had  to  use 
similitudes  of  voices  and  laughter  and  partition- 
walls,  because  one  can  only  use  the  language  which 
one  knows.  But  it  is  all  quite  true  and  real,  more 
real  than  a  hundred  talks  which  one  holds  with  men 
and  women  whose  face  and  dress  one  sees  in  rooms 
and  streets,  and  with  whom  one  bandies  words  about 
things  for  which  one  does  not  care.  There  was 
indeed  some  one  present  with  me,  whom  I  knew  per- 
fectly well  though  I  could  not  discern  him,  whom  I 
had  known  all  my  life,  who  had  gone  about  with  me 
and  shared  all  my  experiences,  in  so  far  as  he 
chose.  But  before  I  go  on  to  speak  farther,  I  will 
tell  one  more  experience,  which  came  at  a  time  when 
I  was  very  unhappy,  longing  to  escape  from  life, 
looking  forward  mournfully  to  death. 

It  had  been  under  similar  circumstances  —  a 
dreadful  argument  proceeding  in  my  mind  as  to 
194. 


That  Other  One 

what  I  could  do  to  get  back  to  happiness  again, 
whom  to  consult,  where  to  go,  whether  to  give  up 
my  work,  whether  to  add  to  it,  what  diet  to  use, 
how  to  get  sleep  which  would  not  visit  me. 

"Can't  you  help  me?"  I  said  over  and  over 
again  to  the  other  person.  At  last  the  answer 
came,  very  faint  and  far  away. 

"  I  am  sick,"  said  the  voice,  "  and  I  cannot 
come  forth ! " 

That  frightened  me  exceedingly,  because  I  felt 
alone  and  weak.  So  I  said,  "  Is  it  my  fault.?  Is 
it  anything  that  I  have  done  ?  " 

"  I  have  had  a  blow,"  said  the  other  voice. 
"You  dealt  it  me  —  but  it  is  not  your  fault  — 
you  did  not  know." 

"What  can  I  do.?  "I  said. 

"  Ah,  nothing,"  said  the  voice.  "  You  must  not 
disturb  me!  I  am  trying  to  recover,  and  I  shall 
recover.  Go  on  with  your  play,  if  you  can,  and 
do  not  heed  me." 

"  My  play  I "  I  said  scornfully.  "  Do  you  not 
know  I  am  miserable.?  " 

The  voice  gave  a  sigh.  "  You  hurt  me,"  it  said. 
"  I  am  weak  and  faint ;  but  you  can  help  me ;  be  as 
brave  as  you  can.  Try  not  to  think  or  grieve.  I 
195 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

shall  be  able  ta  help  you  again  soon,  but  not 
now.  .  .  .  Ah,  leave  me  to  myself,"  it  added.  *'  I 
must  sleep,  a  long  sleep ;  it  is  your  turn  to  help ! " 

And  then  I  heard  no  more ;  till  a  day  long  after, 
when  the  voice  came  to  me  on  a  bright  morning  by 
the  sea,  with  the  clear  waves  breaking  and  hissing 
on  the  shingle;  the  voice  came  blithe  and  strong, 
"  I  am  well  again ;  you  have  done  your  part,  dear 
one !  Give  me  your  burden,  and  I  will  carry  it ;  it 
is  your  time  of  joy !  " 

And  then  for  a  long  time  after  that  I  did  not  hear 
the  voice,  and  I  was  full  of  delight,  hour  by  hour, 
grudging  even  the  time  I  must  spend  in  sleep,  be- 
cause it  kept  me  from  the  life  I  loved. 

These  then  are  some  of  the  talks  we  have  held 
together,  that  Other  One  and  I.  But  I  must  say 
this,  that  he  will  not  always  come  for  being  called. 
I  sometimes  call  to  him  and  get  no  answer;  some- 
times he  cries  out  beside  me  suddenly  in  the  air. 
He  seems  to  have  a  life  of  his  own,  quite  distinct 
from  mine.  Sometimes  when  I  am  fretted  and 
vexed,  he  is  quietly  joyful  and  elate,  and  then  my 
troubles  die  away,  like  the  footsteps  of  the  wind 
upon  water ;  and  sometimes  when  I  would  be  happy 
and  contented,  he  is  heavy  and  displeased,  and  takes 
196 


That  Other  One 

no  heed  of  me ;  and  then  I  too  fall  into  sorrow  and 
gloom.  He  is  much  the  stronger,  and  it  matters 
far  more  to  me  what  he  feels  than  what  I  feel.  I 
do  not  know  how  he  is  occupied  —  very  little,  I 
think,  and  what  is  strangest  of  all,  he  changes 
somewhat;  very  slowly  and  imperceptibly;  but  he 
has  changed  more  than  I  have  in  the  course  of  my 
life.  I  do  not  change  at  all,  I  think.  I  can  say 
better  what  I  think,  I  am  more  accomplished  and 
skilful;  but  the  thought  and  motive  is  unaltered 
from  what  it  was  when  I  was  a  child.  But  he  is 
different  in  some  ways.  I  have  only  gone  on  per- 
ceiving and  remembering,  and  sometimes  forgetting. 
But  he  does  not  forget ;  and  here  I  feel  that  I  have 
helped  him  a  little,  as  a  servant  can  help  his  master 
to  remember  the  little  things  he  has  to  do. 

I  think  that  many  people  must  have  similar  ex- 
periences to  this.  Tennyson  had,  when  he  wrote 
"  The  Two  Voices,"  and  I  have  seen  hints  of  the 
same  thing  in  a  dozen  books.  The  strange  thing 
is  that  it  does  not  help  one  more  to  be  strong  and 
brave,  because  I  know  this,  if  I  know  anything, 
that  when  the  anxious  and  careful  part  of  me  lies 
down  at  last  to  rest,  I  shall  slip  past  the  wall  which 
now  divides  us,  and  be  clasped  close  in  the  arms  of 
197 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

that  Other  One ;  nay,  it  will  be  more  than  that !  I 
shall  be  merged  with  him,  as  the  quivering  water- 
drop  is  merged  with  the  fountain;  that  will  be  a 
blessed  peace;  and  I  shall  know,  I  think,  without 
any  questioning  or  wondering,  many  things  that 
are  obscure  to  me  now,  under  these  low-hung  skies, 
which  after  all  I  love  so  well.  .  .  • 


198 


SCHOOLDAYS 


XII 
SCHOOLDAYS 


IT  certainly  seems,  looking  back  to  the  early 
years,  that  I  have  altered  very  little  —  hardly 
at  all  in  fact !  The  little  thing,  whatever  it  is,  that 
sits  at  the  heart  of  the  machine,  the  speck  of  soul- 
stufF  that  is  really  me,  is  very  much  the  same  crea- 
ture, neither  old  nor  young;  confident,  imperturb- 
able, with  a  strange  insouciance  of  its  own,  know- 
ing what  it  has  to  do.  I  have  done  many  things, 
gathered  many  impressions,  ransacked  experience, 
enjoyed,  suffered;  but  whatever  I  have  argued, 
expressed,  tried  to  believe,  aimed  at,  hoped,  feared, 
has  hardly  affected  that  central  core  of  life  at  all. 
And  I  feel  as  though  that  strange,  dumb,  cheerful 
self  —  it  is  always  cheerful,  I  think  —  had  played 
the  part  all  along  of  a  silent  and  not  very  critical 
spectator  of  all  I  have  tried  to  be.  The  mind,  the 
201 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

reason,  the  emotion,  have  each  of  them  expanded, 
acquired  knowledge,  learned  skill,  but  that  inner- 
most cell  has  lain  there,  sleepless,  perceptive, 
dreaming  head  on  hand,  watching,  seldom  making 
a  sign  of  either  approval  or  disapproval. 

In  childhood  it  was  more  dominant  than  it  is 
now,  perhaps.  It  went  its  way  more  securely,  be- 
cause, in  my  case  at  least,  the  mind  was,  in  those 
far-ofF  days,  strangely  inactive.  The  whole  nature 
was  bent  upon  observation.  Ruskin  is  the  only 
writer  who  has  described  what  was  precisely  my 
own  experience,  when  he  says  that  as  a  child  he 
lived  almost  entirely  in  the  region  of  sight.  It  was 
the  only  part  of  me,  the  eye,  that  was  then  furi- 
ously and  untiringly  awake.  Taste,  smell,  touch, 
had  each  of  them  at  moments  a  sharp  conscious- 
ness; but  it  was  the  shape,  the  form,  the  appear- 
ance of  things,  that  interested  me,  took  up  most  of 
my  time  and  energy,  occupied  me  unceasingly. 
Even  now  my  memory  ranges,  with  lively  precision, 
over  the  home,  the  garden,  the  heathery  moorland, 
the  firwoods,  the  neighboring  houses  of  the  scene 
where  I  lived.  I  can  see  the  winding  walks,  the 
larch  shrubberies,  the  flower-borders,  the  very  grain 
of  the  brickwork ;  while  in  the  house  itself,  the  wall 
202 


Schooldays 

papers,  the  furniture,  the  patterns  of  carpets  and 
chintzes,  are  all  absolutely  clear  to  the  memory. 

Thus  I  lived,  from  day  to  day  and  from  year  to 
year,  in  the  moment  as.  it  passed ;  but  I  remember 
no  touch  of  speculation  or  curiosity  as  to  how  or 
why  things  existed  as  they  did.  The  house,  the  ar- 
rangements, the  servants,  the  meal-times,  the  occu- 
pations were  all  simply  accepted  as  they  were,  just 
the  will  of  my  -parents  taking  shape.  I  never 
thought  of  interrogating  or  altering  anything. 
Life  came  to  me  just  so.  I  remember  no  sharp 
emotions,  no  dominant  affections.  My  parents 
seemed  to  me  kind  and  powerful;  but  it  did  not 
occur  to  me  that,  if  I  had  died,  they  would  feel  any 
particular  grief.  I  was  just  a  part  of  their  ar- 
rangements; and  my  idea  of  life  was  simply  to 
manage  so  that  I  should  be  as  little  interfered  with 
as  possible,  and  go  my  way,  annexing  such  little 
property  as  I  could,  and  learning  the  appearance 
of  the  things  that  were  too  large  to  be  annexed. 

Then  my  elder  brother  went  off  to  school.  I 
do  not  remember  being  sorry,  or  missing  his  com- 
pany; in  fact  I  rather  welcomed  the  additional 
independence  it  gave  me.  I  was  glad  in  a  mild 
way  when  he  came  back  for  the  holidays ;  but  I  do 
a03 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

not  recollect  the  faintest  curiosity  about  what  he 
did  at  school,  or  what  it  was  all  like.  He  told  us 
some  stories  about  boys  and  masters;  but  it  was 
all  quite  remote,  like  a  fairy-tale;  and  then  the 
time  gradually  drew  near  when  I  too  was  to  go  to 
school ;  but  I  remember  neither  interest  or  curiosity 
or  excitement  or  anxiety.  I  think  I  rather  en- 
joyed a  few  extra  presents,  and  the  packing  of  my 
school-box  with  a  consciousness  of  proprietorship. 
And  then  the  day  came,  and  I  drifted  off  like 
thistledown  into  the  big  world. 


My  father  and  mother  took  us  down  to  school. 
It  was  a  fine  place  at  Mortlake,  called  Temple 
Grove,  near  Richmond  Park.  Mortlake  was  hardly 
more  than  an  old-fashioned  village  then,  in  the 
country,  not  joined  to  London  as  it  is  now  by 
streets  and  rows  of  villas.  It  was  a  place  of  big 
suburban  mansions,  with  high  walls  everywhere, 
cedars  looking  over,  towering  chestnuts,  big  classi- 
cal gateposts.  Temple  Grove,  so  called  from  the 
statesman,  the  patron  of  Swift,  was  a  large,  solid, 
handsome  house  with  fine  rooms,  and  large  grounds, 
well  timbered.  Schoolrooms  and  dormitories  had 
204 


Schooldays 

been  tacked  on  to  the  house,  but  all  built  in  a  solid, 
spacious  way.  It  was  dignified,  but  bare  and 
austere.  We  arrived,  and  went  in  to  see  the  head- 
master, Mr.  Waterfield,  a  tall,  handsome,  extremely 
impressive  man,  with  curled  hair  and  beard  and 
flashing  eyes.  He  was  a  fine  gentleman,  a  brilliant 
talker,  and  an  excellent  teacher,  though  unneces- 
sarily severe.  I  had  been  used  to  see  my  father, 
who  was  then  himself  headmaster  of  Wellington 
College,  treated  with  obvious  deference ;  but  Water- 
field,  who  was  an  old  family  friend,  met  him  with  a 
dignified  sort  of  equality.  My  parents  went  in  to 
luncheon  with  the  family.  My  brother  and  I 
crawled  off^  to  the  school  dinner ;  he  of  course  had 
many  friends,  and  I  was  plunged,  shy  and  bewil- 
dered, into  the  middle  of  them.  There  were  over  a 
hundred  boys  there.  Some  of  them  seemed  to  me 
alarmingly  old  and  strong;  but  my  brother's 
friends  were  kind  to  me,  and  I  remember  thinking 
at  first  that  it  was  going  to  be  a  very  pleasant  sort 
of  place.  Then  in  the  early  afternoon  my  parents 
went  off;  we  went  to  the  station  with  them,  and  I 
said  good-by  without  any  particular  emotion.  It 
seemed  to  me  a  nice  easy  kind  of  life.  But  as  my 
brother  and  I  walked  away,  between  the  high- 
205 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

walled  gardens,  back  to  the  school,  the  first  shadow 
fell.  He  was  strangely  silent  and  dull,  I  thought ; 
and  then  he  turned  to  me,  and  in  an  accent  of 
tragedy  which  I  had  never  heard  him  use  before, 
he  said,  "  Thirteen  weeks  at  this  beastly  place ! " 
I  took  a  high  place  for  my  age,  and  after  due 
examination  in  the  big  schoolroom,  where  four 
masters  were  teaching  at  estrades,  with  little  rows 
of  lockered  desks  much  hacked  and  carved,  ar- 
ranged symmetrically  round  each,  the  big  fireplace 
guarded  with  high  iron  bars,  I  was  led  across  the 
room,  and  committed  to  the  care  of  a  little,  pom- 
pous, stout  man,  with  big  side-whiskers,  a  reddish 
nose,  and  an  air  half  irritable,  half  good-natured, 
in  a  short  gown,  who  was  holding  forth  to  a  class. 
It  was  all  complete:  I  had  my  place  and  my  duty 
before  me ;  and  then  gradually  day  by  day  the  life 
shaped  itself.  I  had  a  little  cubicle  in  a  high 
dormitory.  There  was  the  big,  rather  frowsy 
dining-room,  where  we  took  our  meals;  a  large 
comfortable  library  where  we  could  sit  and  read; 
outside  there  were  two  or  three  cricket  fields,  a 
graveled  yard  for  drill,  a  gymnasium ;  and  beyond 
that  stretched  what  were  called  "  the  grounds," 
which  seemed  to  me  then  and  still  seem  a  really 
206 


Schooldays 

beautiful  place.  It  had  all  been  elaborately  laid 
out;  there  was  a  big  lawn,  low-lying,  where  there 
had  once  been  a  lake,  shrubberies  and  winding 
walks,  a  ruinous  building,  with  a  classical  portico, 
on  the  top  of  a  wooded  mound,  a  kitchen  garden 
and  paddocks  for  cows  beyond;  and  on  each  side 
the  walls  and  palings  of  other  big  mansions,  all 
rather  grand  and  mysterious.  And  there  within 
that  little  space  my  life  was  to  be  spent. 

The  only  sight  we  ever  had  of  the  outer  world 
was  that  we  went  on  Sundays  to  an  extraordinarily 
ugly  and  tasteless  modern  church,  where  the  serv- 
ices were  hideously  performed;  and  occasionally 
we  were  allowed  to  go  over  to  Richmond  with  a 
shilling  or  two  of  pocket-money  to  shop;  and 
sometimes  there  were  walks,  a  dozen  boys  with  a 
good-natured  master  rambling  about  Richmond 
Park,  with  its  forest  clumps  and  its  wandering 
herds  of  deer,  all  very  dim  and  beautiful  to 
me. 

Very  soon  I  settled  in  my  own  mind  that  it  was 
a  detestable  place.  Yet  I  was  never  bullied  or 
molested  in  any  way.  The  tone  of  the  place  was 
incredibly  good ;  not  one  word  or  hint  of  moral  evil 
did  I  ever  hear  there  during  the  whole  two  years  I 
207 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

spent  there,  so  that  I  left  the  school  as  innocent 
as  I  had  entered  it. 

But  it  was  a  place  of  terrors  and  solitude. 
There  were  rules  which  one  did  not  know,  and 
might  unawares  break.  I  did  not,  I  believe,  make 
a  single  real  friend  there.  I  liked  a  few  of  the 
boys,  but  was  wholly  bent  on  guarding  my  inner 
life  from  every  one.  The  work  was  always  easy  to 
me,  the  masters  were  good-natured  and  efficient. 
But  I  lived  entirely  in  dreams  of  the  holidays  — 
home  had  become  a  distant  heavenly  place ;  and  I 
recollect  waking  early  in  the  summer  mornings, 
hearing  the  scream  of  peacocks  in  a  neighboring 
pleasaunce,  and  thinking  with  a  sickening  disgust 
of  the  strict,  ordered  routine  of  the  place,  no  one 
to  care  about,  dull  work  to  be  done,  nothing  to  en- 
joy or  to  be  interested  in.  There  were  games,  but 
they  were  not  much  organized,  and  I  seldom  played 
them.  I  wandered  about  in  free  times  in  the 
grounds,  and  the  only  times  of  delight  that  I  recol- 
lect were  when  one  buried  oneself  in  a  book  in  the 
library,  and  dived  into  imaginations. 

The  place  was  well  managed;  we  were  whole- 
somely fed ;  but  there  had  grown  up  a  strange  kind 
of  taboo  about  many  of  the  things  we  were  sup- 
208 


Schooldays 

posed  to  eat.  I  had  a  healthy  appetite,  but  the 
tradition  was  that  all  the  food  was  unutterably 
bad,  adulterated,  hocussed.  The  theory  was  that 
one  must  just  eat  enough  to  sustain  life.  There 
was,  for  instance,  an  excellent  tapioca  pudding 
served  on  certain  days ;  but  no  one  was  allowed  to 
eat  it.  The  law  was  that  it  had  to  be  shoveled 
into  envelopes  and  afterwards  cast  away  in  the 
playground.  I  do  not  know  if  the  masters  saw 
this  —  it  was  never  adverted  upon  —  and  I  did  it 
ruefully  enough.  The  consequence  was  that  one 
lived  hungrily  in  the  midst  of  plenty,  and  food 
became  the  one  prepossession  of  life. 

I  was  a  delicate  boy  in  those  days,  and  used  often 
to  be  sent  off  to  the  sanatorium  with  bad  throats 
and  other  ailments.  It  was  a  little,  old-fashioned 
house  in  Mprtlake,  and  the  matron  of  it  had  been 
an  old  servant  of  our  own.  She  was  the  only  per- 
son there  whom  I  regarded  with  real  affection,  and 
to  go  to  the  sanatorium  was  like  heaven.  One  had 
a  comfortable  room,  and  dear  Louisa  used  to  em- 
brace and  kiss  me  stealthily,  provide  little  treats 
for  me,  take  me  out  walks.  I  have  spent  many 
hours  happily  in  the  little  walled  garden  there,  with 
its  big  box  trees,  or  gazing  from  a  window  into  the 
209 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

street,  watching  the  grocer  over  the  way  set  out 
his  shop-window. 

Of  incidents,  tragic  or  comic,  I  remember  but 
few.  I  saw  a  stupid  boy  vigorously  caned  with 
a  sickening  extremity  of  horror.  I  recollect  a 
"  school  licking  "  being  given  to  an  ill-conditioned 
boy  for  a  nasty  piece  of  bullying.  The  boys 
ranged  themselves  down  the  big  schoolroom,  and 
the  culprit  had  to  run  the  gauntlet.  I  can  see  his 
ugly,  tear-stained  face  coming  slowly  along  among 
a  shower  of  blows.  I  joined  in  with  a  will,  I  re- 
member, though  I  hardly  knew  what  he  had  done. 
I  remember  a  few  afternoons  spent  at  the  houses 
of  friendly  masters ;  but  otherwise  it  was  all  a  drab 
starved  sort  of  level,  a  life  lived  by  a  rule,  with  no 
friendships,  no  adventures ;  I  marked  off  the  days 
before  the  holidays  on  a  little  calendar,  simply 
bent  on  hiding  what  I  was  or  thought  or  felt  from 
every  one,  with  a  fortitude  that  was  not  in  the 
least  stoical.  What  I  was  afraid  of  I  hardly 
know ;  my  aim  was  to  be  absolutely  inoffensive  and 
ordinary,  to  do  what  every  one  else  did,  to  avoid 
any  sort  of  notice.  I  was  a  strange  mixture  of  in- 
difference and  sensitiveness.  I  did  not  in  the  least 
care  how  I  was  regarded,  I  had  no  ambitions  of  any 
310 


Schooldays 

kind,  did  not  want  to  be  liked,  or  to  succeed,  or  to 
make  an  impression;  while  I  was  very  sensitive  to 
the  slightest  comment  or  ridicule.  It  seems  strange 
to  me  now  that  I  should  have  hated  the  life  with 
such  an  intensity  of  repugnance,  for  no  harm  or 
ill-usage  ever  befell  me ;  but  if  that  was  life,  well, 
I  did  not  like  it!  I  trusted  no  one;  I  neither 
wanted  nor  gave  confidences.  The  term  was  just 
a  dreary  interlude  in  home  life,  to  be  lived  through 
with  such  indifference  as  one  could  muster. 

I  spent  two  years  there ;  and  remember  my  final 
departure  with  my  brother.  I  never  wanted  to  see 
or  hear  of  any  one  there  again  —  masters,  serv- 
ants, or  boys.  It  was  a  case  of  good-by  forever 
and  thank  God!  And  I  remember  with  what 
savage  glee  and  delicious  anticipation  I  saw  the  last 
of  the  high-walled  house,  with  its  roofs  and  wings, 
its  great  gateposts  and  splendid  cedars.  I  could 
laugh  at  its  dim  terrors  on  regaining  my  freedom ; 
but  I  had  not  the  least  spark  of  gratitude  or 
loyalty ;  such  kindnesses  as  I  received  I  had  taken 
dumbly,  never  thinking  that  they  arose  out  of  any 
affection  or  interest,  but  treating  them  as  the 
unaccountable  choice  of  my  elders ;  —  we  stopped 
for  an  instant  at  the  little  sanatorium  —  that  had 
^11 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

been  a  happy  place  at  least  —  and  I  was  tearfully 
hugged  to  Louisa's  ample  bosom,  Louisa  alone 
being  a  little  sorry  that  I  should  be  so  glad  to  get 
away. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  life  there,  sensible, 
healthy,  and  well-ordered  as  it  was,  did  me  much 
good.  I  was  a  happy  enough  boy  in  home  life, 
but  had  little  animal  spirits,  and  none  of  the  bois- 
terous, rough-and-tumble  ebullience  of  boyhood. 
I  was  shy  and  sensitive ;  but  I  doubt  if  it  was  well 
that  interest,  enjoyment,  emotion,  should  all  have 
been  so  utterly  starved  as  they  were.  It  made  me 
suspicious  of  life,  and  incurious  about  it ;  I  did  not 
like  its  loud  sounds,  its  combative  merriment,  its 
coarse  flavors;  the  real  life,  that  of  observation, 
imagination,  dreams,  fancies,  had  been  hunted  into 
a  comer;  and  the  sense  that  one  might  incur  ridi- 
cule, enmity,  severity,  dislike,  harshness,  had  filled 
the  air  with  uneasy  terrors.  I  came  away  selfish, 
able  —  I  had  won  a  scholarship  at  Eton  with  entire 
ease  —  innocent,  childish,  bewildered,  wholly  unam- 
bitious. The  world  seemed  to  me  a  big,  noisy, 
stupid  place,  in  which  there  was  no  place  for  me. 
The  little  inner  sense  of  which  I  have  spoken  was 
hardly  awake ;  it  had  had  its  first  sight  of  human- 
ai2 


Schooldays 

ity,  and  it  disliked  it;  it  was  still  solitary  and 
silent,  finding  its  own  way,  and  quite  unaware  that 
it  need  have  any  relation  with  other  human 
beings. 

3 

Then  came  Eton.  Into  which  big  place  I 
drifted  again  in  a  state  of  mild  bewilderment.  But 
big  as  Eton  is  —  it  was  close  on  a  thousand  boys, 
when  I  went  there  —  at  no  time  was  I  in  the  least 
degree  conscious  of  its  size  as  an  uncomfortable 
element.  The  truth  is  that  Eton  runs  itself  on 
lines  far  more  like  a  university  than  a  school :  each 
house  is  like  a  college,  with  its  own  traditions  and 
its  own  authority.  There  is  very  little  intercourse 
between  the  younger  boys  at  different  houses,  and 
there  is  an  instinctive  disapproval  among  the  boys 
themselves  of  external  relations.  The  younger 
boys  of  a  house  play  together,  to  a  large  extent 
work  together,  and  live  a  common  life.  It  is 
tacitly  understood  that  a  boy  throws  in  his  lot  with 
his  own  house,  and  if  he  makes  many  friends  out- 
side he  is  generally  unpopular,  on  the  ground  that 
he  is  thought  to  find  his  natural  companions  not 
good  enough  for  him.  Neither  have  boys  of  differ- 
213 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

ent  ages  much  to  do  with  each  other ;  each  house  is 
divided  by  parallel  lines  of  cleavage,  so  that  it  is 
not  a  weltering  mass  of  boyhood,  but  a  collection 
of  very  clearly  defined  groups  and  circles. 

Moreover,  in  my  own  time  there  was  no  building 
at  Eton  which  could  hold  the  whole  school,  so  that 
on  no  occasion  did  I  ever  see  the  school  assembled. 
There  were  two  chapels,  the  schoolrooms  were  con- 
siderably scattered ;  even  on  the  occasions  when  the 
headmaster  made  a  speech  to  the  school,  he  did 
not  even  invite  the  lower  boys  to  attend,  while 
there  was  no  compulsion  on  the  upper  boys  to  be 
present,  so  that  it  was  not  necessary  to  go,  unless 
one  thought  it  likely  to  be  amusing. 

I  was  myself  on  the  foundation,  one  of  the 
seventy  king's  scholars,  as  we  were  called ;  we  lived 
in  the  old  buildings ;  we  dined  together  in  the  col- 
lege hall,  a  stately  Gothic  place,  over  four  cen- 
turies old,  with  a  timbered  roof,  open  fireplaces, 
and  portraits  of  notable  Etonians.  We  wore  cloth 
gowns  in  public,  and  surplices  in  the  chapel.  It 
was  all  very  grand  and  dignified,  but  we  were  in 
those  days  badly  fed,  and  very  little  looked  after. 
There  were  many  ancient  and  curious  customs, 
which  one  picked  up  naturally,  and  never  thought 
ai4< 


Schooldays 

them  either  old  or  curious.  For  instance,  when  I 
first  went  there,  the  small  boys,  three  at  a  time, 
waited  on  the  sixth  form  at  their  dinner,  being 
called  servitors,  handing  plates,  pouring  out  beer, 
or  holding  back  the  long  sleeves  of  the  big  boys' 
gowns,  as  they  carved  for  themselves  at  the  end  of 
the  table.  This  was  abolished  shortly  after  my 
arrival  as  being  degrading.  But  it  never  occurred 
to  us  that  it  was  anything  but  amusing ;  we  had  the 
fun  of  watching  the  great  men  at  their  meal,  and 
hearing  them  gossip.  I  remember  well  being  kindly 
but  firmly  told  by  the  present  Dean  of  Westminster, 
then  in  sixth  form,  that  I  must  make  my  appear- 
ance for  the  future  with  cleaner  hands  and  better 
brushed  hair ! 

We  were  kindly  and  paternally  treated  by  the 
older  boys ;  I  was  assigned  as  a  fag  to  my  present 
publisher,  Mr.  Reginald  Smith.  I  had  to  fill  and 
empty  his  bath  for  him,  make  his  tea  and  toast, 
call  him  in  the  morning,  and  run  errands.  In  re- 
turn for  which  I  was  allowed  to  do  my  work  peace- 
fully in  his  room,  in  the  evenings,  when  the  fags' 
quarters  were  noisy,  and  if  I  had  difficulties  about 
my  work,  he  was  always  ready  to  help  me.  So 
normal  a  thing  was  it,  that  I  remember  saying  in- 
gl5 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

dignantly  to  my  tutor,  when  he  marked  a  false 
quantity  in  one  of  my  verses,  "  Why,  sir,  my  fag- 
master  did  that !  "  He  laughed  and  said,  "  Take 
my  compliments  to  your  fagmaster,  and  tell  him 
that  the  first  syllable  of  senator  is  short !  " 

We  lived  as  lower  boys  in  a  big  room  with 
cubicles,  which  abutted  on  the  passage  where  the 
sixth  form  rooms  were.  It  was  a  noisy  place,  with 
its  great  open  fireplace  and  huge  oak  table.  If 
the  noise  was  excessive,  the  Sixth  Form  intervened ; 
and  I  remember  being  very  gently  caned,  in  the 
company  of  the  present  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  for 
making  a  small  bonfire  of  old  blotting-paper,  which 
filled  the  place  with  smoke. 

The  liberty,  after  the  private  school,  was  as- 
tonishing. We  had  to  appear  in  school  at  certain 
hours,  not  very  numerous ;  and  some  extra  work 
was  done  with  the  private  tutor ;  but  there  was  no 
supervision,  and  we  were  supposed  to  prepare  our 
work  and  do  our  exercises,  when  and  as  we  could. 
There  were  a  few  compulsory  games,  but  other- 
wise we  were  allowed  to  do  exactly  as  we  liked. 
The  side  streets  of  Windsor  were  out  of  bounds, 
but  we  were  allowed  to  go  up  the  High  Street,  we 
had  free  access  to  the  castle  and  park  and  all  the 
216 


Schooldays 

surrounding  country.  On  half  holidays  —  three 
a  week  —  our  names  were  called  over ;  but  it  left 
one  with  a  three-hour  space  in  the  afternoon,  when 
we  could  go  exactly  where  we  would.  The  saints' 
days  and  certain  anniversaries  were  whole  holidays, 
and  we  were  free  from  morning  to  night.  Then 
there  was  a  delightful  room,  the  old  school  library, 
now  destroyed,  where  we  could  go  and  read;  and 
many  an  hour  did  I  spend  there  looking  vaguely 
into  endless  books.  I  well  remember  seeing  the 
present  Lord  Curzon  and  one  of  the  Wallops 
standing  by  the  fireplace  there,  and  discussing  some 
political  question,  and  how  amazed  I  was  at  the 
profundity  of  their  knowledge  and  the  dignity  of 
their  language. 

But  in  many  ways  it  was  a  very  isolated  life; 
for  a  long  time  I  hardly  knew  any  boys  except  just 
the  dozen  or  so  who  entered  the  place  with  me.  I 
knew  no  boys  at  other  houses,  except  a  few  in  my 
school  division,  and  never  did  more  than  exchange 
a  few  words  with  them.  One  never  thought  of 
speaking  to  a  casual  boy,  unless  one  knew  him ;  and 
there  are  many  men  whom  I  have  since  known  well 
who  were  in  the  school  with  me,  and  with  whom  I 
never  exchanged  a  syllable. 
^17 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Though  there  was  a  master  in  college,  who  read- 
evening  prayers,  gave  leaves  and  allowances,  and 
was  consulted  on  matters  of  business,  he  had  prac- 
tically nothing  to  do  with  the  discipline.  That 
was  all  in  the  hands  of  the  sixth  form,  who  kept 
order,  put  up  notices,  and  were  allowed  not  only 
to  cane  but  to  set  lines.  No  one  ever  thought  of 
appealing  to  the  master  against  them,  and  their 
powers  were  never  abused.  But  there  was  very 
little  overt  discipline  anywhere.  The  masters 
could  not  inflict  corporal  punishment.  They  could 
set  punishments,  and  for  misbehavior,  or  con- 
tinued idleness,  they  could  send  a  boy  to  the 
headmaster  to  be  flogged.  But  the  discipline  of 
the  place  was  instinctive,  and  public  opinion  was 
infinitely  strong.  One  found  out  by  the  light  of 
nature  what  one  might  do  and  what  one  might  not, 
and  the  dread  of  being  in  any  way  unusual  or  ec- 
centric was  very  potent.  There  were  two  or  three 
very  ill-governed  houses,  where  things  went  very 
wrong  indeed  behind  the  scenes ;  but  as  far  as 
public  order  went,  it  was  perfect.  The  boys  man- 
aged their  own  games  and  their  own  aff'airs ;  a 
strong  sense  of  subordination  penetrated  the  whole 
place,  and  the  old  Eton  aphorism,  that  a  boy 
218 


Schooldays 

learned  to  know  his  place  and  to  keep  it,  held  good 
without  any  sense  of  coercion  or  constraint. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  educational  system  was  a 
good  one.  In  my  days  there  was  little  taught 
besides  classics  and  mathematics  and  divinity. 
There  was  a  little  French  and  science  and  history ; 
but  the  core  of  the  whole  thing  was  undiluted 
classics.  We  did  a  good  deal  of  composition, 
Greek  and  Latin,  and  the  Latin  verses  were  exer- 
cises out  of  which  I  got  much  real  enj  oyment,  and 
some  of  the  pride  of  authorship.  But  it  was  pos- 
sible to  be  very  idle,  and  to  get  much  contraband 
help  in  work  from  other  boys.  Most  of  the  school 
work  consisted  of  repetition,  and  of  classical  books, 
dully  and  leisurely  construed.  I  do  not  think  I 
ever  attempted  to  attend  to  the  work  in  school; 
and  there  were  few  stimulating  teachers.  I  needed 
strict  and  careful  teaching,  and  got  some  from 
my  private  tutor ;  but  otherwise  there  was  no  indi- 
vidual attention.  The  net  result  was  that  a  few 
able  boys  turned  out  very  good  scholars,  saturated 
with  classics ;  but  a  large  number  of  boys  were 
really  not  educated  at  all.  The  forms  were  too 
large  for  real  supervision ;  and  as  long  as  one  pro- 
duced adequate  exercises,  and  sate  quiet  in  one's 
219 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

comer,  one  was  left  genially  alone.  It  was  not 
fashionable  to  "  sap,"  as  it  was  called ;  and  though 
a  few  ambitious  boys  worked  hard,  we  most  of  us 
lived  in  a  happy-go-lucky  way,  just  doing  enough 
to  pass  muster.  I  took  not  the  faintest  interest  in 
my  work  for  a  long  time ;  but  I  read  a  great  many 
English  books,  wrote  poetry  in  secret,  picked  up  a 
vague  acquaintance,  of  a  very  inaccurate  kind, 
with  Latin  and  Greek,  but  possessed  no  exact 
knowledge  of  any  sort. 

Gradually,  as  I  rose  in  the  school,  a  faint  idea 
of  social  values  shaped  itself.  Let  me  say  frankly 
that  we  were  wholly  democratic.  There  were  many 
wealthy  boys,  many  with  titles ;  but  not  the  faint- 
est interest  was  taken  in  either.  I  was  surprised 
to  find  later  on  in  my  career  at  school,  that  boys 
whose  names  I  had  known  by  hearsay,  were  peers, 
though  at  first  I  had  no  idea  what  the  peerage  was. 
Whatever  we  were  free  from,  we  were  at  all  events 
free  from  snobbishness.  Athletics  were  what  con- 
stituted our  aristocracy,  pure  and  simple.  Boys 
in  the  eleven  and  the  eight  were  the  heroes  of  the 
place,  and  the  school  club  called  Pop,  to  which 
mainly  athletes  were  elected,  enjoyed  an  absolute 
supremacy,  and  indeed  ran  the  out-of-doors  disci- 


Schooldays 

pline  of  the  school.  In  fact,  on  occasions  like  big 
matches,  the  boys  were  kept  back  behind  the  lines, 
by  members  of  Pop  parading  with  canes,  and 
slashing  at  the  crowd  if  they  came  past  the  bound- 
aries. All  the  social  standing  of  boys  was  settled 
entirely  by  athletics.  A  boy  might  be  clever, 
agreeable,  manly,  a  good  game-shot  or  a  rider  to 
hounds  in  the  holidays,  but  if  he  was  no  good  at 
the  prescribed  games,  he  was  nobody  at  all  at  Eton. 
It  was  wholesome  in  a  sense;  but  a  bad  boy  who 
was  a  good  athlete  might  and  did  wield  a  very  evil 
influence.  Such  boys  were  above  criticism.  The 
moral  tone  was  not  low  so  much  as  strangely  in- 
different. A  boy's  private  life  was  his  own  affair, 
and  public  opinion  exercised  no  particular  moral 
sway.  Yet  vague  and  guileless  as  I  myself  was, 
I  gratefully  record  that  I  never  came  in  the  way  of 
any  evil  influence  whatever  at  Eton,  in  any  respect 
whatever.  Talk  was  rather  loose,  and  one  believed 
evil  of  other  boys  easily  enough.  To  express  open 
disapproval  would  have  been  held  to  be  priggish ; 
and  though  undoubtedly  the  tone  of  certain  houses 
and  certain  groups  was  far  from  good,  there  yet 
ran  through  the  place  a  mature  sense  of  a  boy's 
right  to  be  independent,  and  undesirable  ways  of 
221 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

life  were  more  a  matter  of  choice  than  of  coercion. 
It  was,  in  fact,  far  more  a  mirror  of  the  larger 
world  than  any  other  school  I  have  ever  heard  of; 
and  I  know  of  no  school  story  which  gives  any 
impression  of  a  life  so  curiously  free  as  it  all  was. 
There  was  none  of  that  electrical  circulation  of 
the  news  of  events  and  incident  that  is  held  to  be 
characteristic  of  school  life.  One  used  to  hear 
long  after,  or  not  at  all,  of  things  which  had  hap- 
pened. There  were  rumors,  there  was  gossip ;  but 
I  cannot  imagine  any  place  where  a  boy  of  solitary 
or  retiring  character  might  be  so  entirely  unaware 
of  anything  that  was  going  on.  It  was  a  highly 
individualistic  place;  and  if  one  conformed  to 
superficial  traditions,  it  was  possible  to  lead,  as  I 
certainly  did,  a  very  quiet  and  secluded  sort  of 
life,  reading,  rambling  about,  talking  endlessly  and 
eagerly  to  a  few  chosen  friends,  quite  unconscious 
that  anything  was  being  done  for  one,  socially  or 
educationally,  entirely  unmolested,  as  long  as  one 
was  good-natured  and  easy-going. 

It  was  therefore  a  good  school  for  a  boy  with 

any  toughness  of  mind  or  originality ;  but  it  tended 

in  the  case  of  normal  and  unreflective  boys  to 

develop  a  conventional  type;  good-mannered,  sen- 

222 


Schooldays 

sible,  with  plenty  of  savoir  fcdre,  but  with  a  wrong 
set  of  values.  It  made  boys  overestimate  athletics, 
despise  intellectual  things,  worship  social  success. 
It  gave  them  the  wrong  sort  of  tolerance,  by  which 
I  mean  the  tolerance  that  excuses  moral  lapses, 
but  that  also  thinks  contemptuously  of  ideas  and 
mental  originality.  The  idols  of  the  place  were 
good-humored,  modest,  orderly  athletes.  The 
masters  made  friends  with  them,  because  a  good 
mutual  understanding  conduced  to  discipline,  and 
they  were,  moreover,  pleasant  and  cheerful  com- 
panions. But  boys  of  character  and  force,  unless 
they  were  also  athletic,  were  apt  to  be  overlooked. 
The  theory  of  government  was  not  to  interfere, 
and  there  was  an  absence  of  enthusiasm  and  in- 
spiration. The  headmaster  was  Dr.  Hornby, 
afterwards  provost,  a  courteous,  handsome,  digni- 
fied gentleman,  a  fine  preacher,  and  one  of  the  most 
charming  public  speakers  I  have  ever  heard.  We 
respected  and  admired  him,  but  he  knew  little  of 
his  masters,  and  never  made  his  personal  influence, 
which  might  have  been  great,  felt  among  the  boys. 
He  was  a  man  of  matchless  modesty  and  refine- 
ment; he  never  fulminated  or  lectured;  I  never 
heard  an  irritable  word  fall  from  his  lips ;  but  on 
223 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  other  hand  he  never  appealed  to  us,  or  asked 
our  help,  or  spoke  eagerly  or  indignantly  about 
any  event  or  tendency.  He  hated  evil,  but  closed 
his  eyes  to  it,  and  preferred  to  think  that  it  was 
not  there.  There  were  masters  who  in  their  own 
houses  and  forms  displayed  more  vivid  qualities ; 
but  the  whole  tone  of  the  place  was  against  any- 
thing emotional  or  passionate  or  uplifting;  the 
ideal  that  soaked  into  the  mind  was  one  of  tem- 
perate, orderly,  well-mannered  athleticism. 

At  the  end  of  my  time  I  rose  to  moderate  dis- 
tinction. I  began  to  read  the  classics  privately,  I 
reached  sixth  form,  and  even  was  elected  into  Pop. 
But  I  was  always  unadventurous,  and  in  a  way 
timid.  I  nurtured  a  private  life  of  my  own  on 
books  and  talk,  and  felt  that  the  center  of  life  had 
insensibly  shifted  from  home  to  school.  But  in 
and  through  it  all,  I  never  gained  any  deep  patriot- 
ism, any  unselfish  ambition,  any  visions  which  could 
have  inspired  me  to  play  a  noble  part  in  the  world. 
I  am  sure  that  was  as  much  the  result  of  my  own 
temperament  as  of  the  spirit  of  the  place ;  but  the 
spirit  of  the  place  was  potent,  and  taught  me  to 
acquiesce  in  an  ideal  of  decorum,  of  subordination, 
of  regular,  courteous,  unenthusiastic  life. 
224* 


Schooldays 

Leaving  the  school  was  a  melancholy  business; 
one's  roots  were  entwined  very  deep  with  the  soil, 
the  buildings,  the  memories,  the  happiness  of  the 
place  —  for  happy  above  all  things  it  was  —  in  the 
last  few  weeks  there  were  many  strange  emotional 
outbursts  from  boys  who  had  seemed  conventional 
enough ;  and  there  was  a  dreary  sense  that  life  was 
at  an  end,  and  would  have  little  of  future  bright- 
ness or  excitement  to  provide.  I  packed,  I  made 
my  farewells,  I  distributed  presents ;  and  as  I  drove 
away,  the  carriage,  ascending  the  bridge  by  the 
beloved  playing-fields,  with  its  lawns  and  elms,  the 
gliding  river  and  the  Castle  towering  up  behind, 
showed  me  in  a  glance  the  old  red-brick  walls,  the 
turrets,  the  high  chapel,  with  its  pinnacles  and 
great  buttresses,  where  seven  good  years  had  been 
spent.  I  burst,  I  remember,  into  unashamed  tears  ; 
but  no  sense  of  regret  for  failure,  or  idleness,  or 
vacuous  ease,  or  absence  of  all  fine  intention,  came 
over  me,  though  I  had  been  guilty  of  all  these 
things.  I  wish  that  I  had  felt  remorse!  But  I 
was  only  grateful  and  fond  and  sad  at  leaving  so 
untroubled  and  delightful  a  piece  of  life  behind  me. 
The  worl3  ahead  did  not  seem  to  me  to  hold  out 
anything  which  I  burned  to  do  or  to  achieve ;  it  was 
225 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

but  the  closing  of  a  door,  the  end  of  a  chapter,  the 
sudden  silencing  of  a  music,  sweet  to  hear,  which 
could  not  come  again.  .  .  . 

That  was  all  five-and- thirty  years  ago!  Since 
that  time  —  I  have  seen  it  unmistakably,  both  as 
a  schoolmaster  and  as  a  don  —  a  different  spirit 
has  grown  up,  a  sense  of  corporate  and  social  duty, 
a  larger  idea  of  national  service,  not  loudly  ad- 
vertised but  deeply-rooted,  and  far  removed  from 
the  undisciplined  individualism  of  my  boyhood.  It 
has  been  a  secret  growth,  not  an  educational  pro- 
gram. The  Boer  War,  I  think,  revealed  its  pres- 
ence, and  the  war  we  are  now  waging  has  testified 
to  its  mature  strength.  It  has  come  partly  by  or- 
ganisation, and  still  more  through  the  workings 
of  a  more  generous  and  self-sacrificing  ideal.  In 
any  case  it  is  a  great  and  noble  harvest ;  and  I  re- 
joice with  all  my  heart  that  it  has  thus  ripened 
and  borne  fruit,  in  courage  and  disinterestedness, 
and  high-hearted  public  spirit. 


£26 


AUTHORSHIP 


XIII 
AUTHORSHIP 


T  I  iHE  essay  which  stands  next  in  this  volume, 
X  "  Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease,"  was  the  sub- 
ject of  a  curious  and  interesting  experiment.  It 
seemed  to  me,  when  I  first  thought  of  it,  to  be  a 
suggestive  subject,  a  substantial  idea.  One  ought 
not  to  write  a  commentary  on  one's  own  work,  but 
the  underlying  theme  is  this:  I  have  been  haunted 
all  my  life,  at  intervals,  sometimes  very  insistently, 
by  the  sense  of  a  quest;  and  I  have  often  seemed 
to  myself  to  be  searching  for  something  which  I 
have  somehow  lost ;  to  be  engaged  in  trying  to  re- 
discover some  emotion  or  thought  which  I  had  once 
certainly  possessed  and  as  certainly  have  forgot- 
ten or  mislaid.  At  times  I  felt  on  the  track  of  it, 
as  if  it  had  passed  that  way  not  long  before;  at 
times  I  have  felt  as  if  I  were  close  upon  it,  and 
as  if  it  were  only  hidden  from  me  by  the  thinnest 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

of  veils.  I  have  reason  to  know  that  other  people 
have  the  same  feeling;  and  indeed  it  is  that  which 
constitutes  the  singular  and  moving  charm  of 
Newman's  poem,  "  Lead,  Kindly  Light  " ;  where  all 
is  summed  up  in  those  exquisite  lines,  often  so 
strangely  misinterpreted  and  misunderstood,  which 
end  the  poem. 

And  with  the  mom  those  angel  faces  smile. 
Which  I  have  loved  long  since,  and  lost  awhile. 

I  wish  that  he  had  not  written  "  those  angel 
faces,"  because  it  seems  to  limit  the  quest  to  ec- 
clesiastical lines,  as,  indeed,  I  expect  Newman  did 
limit  it.  But  we  must  not  be  so  blind  as  to  be 
unable  to  see  behind  the  texture  of  prepossessions 
that  decorate,  as  with  a  tapestry,  the  chambers  of 
a  man's  inner  thought ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  what- 
ever that  Newman  meant  the  same  thing  that  I 
mean,  though  he  used  different  symbols.  Again 
we  find  the  same  idea  in  Wordsworth's  "  Ode  on 
the  Intimations  of  Immortality,"  the  thought  that 
life  is  not  circumscribed  by  birth  and  death,  but 
that  one's  experience  is  a  much  larger  and  older 
thing  than  the  experience  which  mere  memory  re- 
cords. It  is  that  which  one  has  lost;  and  one  of 
230 


Authorship 

the  greatest  mysteries  of  art  lies  in  the  fact  that 
a  picture,  or  a  sudden  music,  or  a  page  in  a  book, 
will  sometimes  startle  one  into  the  consciousness 
of  having  heard,  seen,  known,  felt  the  emotion  be- 
fore, elsewhere,  beyond  the  visible  horizon. 

Well,  I  tried  to  put  that  idea  into  words  in 
"  Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease  " ;  and  because  it  was 
a  deep  and  dim  idea,  and  also  partly  because  it 
fascinated  me  greatly,  I  spent  far  more  time  and 
trouble  on  the  little  piece  than  I  generally  spend. 

Then  it  occurred  to  me,  in  a  whimsical  moment, 
that  I  would  try  an  experiment.  I  would  send 
out  the  thing  as  a  ballon  d'essai,  to  see  if  any  one 
would  read  it  for  itself,  or  would  detect  me  under- 
neath the  disguise.  Through  the  kind  oflSces  of 
a  friend,  I  had  it  published  secretly  and  anony- 
mously. I  chose  the  most  beautiful  type  and 
paper  I  could  find;  it  cost  me  far  more  than  the 
sale  of  the  whole  edition  could  possibly  recoup. 
I  had  it  sent  to  papers  for  review,  and  I  even 
had  some  copies  sent  to  literary  friends  of  my 
own. 

The  result  was  a  quite  enchanting  humiliation. 
One  paper  reviewed  it  kindly,  in  a  little  paragraph, 
and  said  it  was  useful ;  another  said  that  the  writer 
^1 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

used  the  word  "  one  "  much  too  frequently ;  while 
only  one  of  my  friends  even  acknowledged  it.  It  is 
pleasant  to  begin  at  the  bottom  again,  and  find 
that  no  one  will  listen,  even  to  a  very  careful  bit 
of  writing  by  one  who  has  at  all  events  had  a  good 
deal  of  practice,  and  who  did  his  very  best  I 

This  set  me  thinking  over  my  literary  adven- 
tures ;  and  I  think  they  may  be  interesting  to  other 
authors  or  would-be  authors ;  and  then  I  wish  to 
go  a  little  further,  and  try  to  say,  if  I  can,  what 
I  believe  the  writing  of  books  really  to  be,  why 
one*  writes,  and  what  one  is  aiming  at.  I  have  a 
very  clear  idea  about  it  all,  and  it  can  do  no  harm 
to  state  it. 

I  was  brought  up  much  among  books  and  talk 
about  books.  Indeed,  I  have  always  believed  that 
my  father,  though  he  had  great  practical  gifts  of 
organization  and  administration,  which  came  out 
in  his  work  as  a  schoolmaster  and  a  bishop,  was 
very  much  of  an  artist  at  heart,  and  would  have 
liked  to  be  a  poet.  Indeed,  the  practice  of  author- 
ship has  run  in  my  family  to  a  quite  extraordinary 
degree.     In  four  generations,  I  believe  that  some 


Authorship 

twenty  of  my  blood-relations  have  written  and  pub- 
lished books,  from  my  cousin  Adelaide  Anne  Proc- 
ter to  my  uncle  Henry  Sidgwick.  When  we  were 
children,  we  produced  little  magazines  of  prose  and 
poetry,  and  read  them  in  the  family  circle.  I 
wrote  poetry  as  a  boy  at  Eton,  and  at  Cambridge 
as  an  undergraduate;  and  at  the  end  of  my  time 
at  Cambridge  I  produced  a  novel,  which  I  sent  to 
"  Macmillan's  Magazine,"  of  which  Lord  Morley 
was  then  editor,  who  sent  it  back  to  me  with  a  kind 
letter  to  say  that  it  was  sauce  without  meat,  and 
that  I  should  not  be  proud  of  the  book  in  later  life 
if  it  were  published. 

Then  as  an  undergraduate  I  began  an  odd  little 
book  called  "  Memoirs  of  Arthur  Hamilton,"  a 
morbid  affair,  which  was  published  anonymously, 
and,  though  severely  handled  by  reviewers,  had  a 
certain  measure  of  success.  But  then  I  became  a 
busy  schoolmaster,  and  all  I  did  was  to  write  la- 
bored little  essays,  which  appeared  in  various 
magazines,  and  were  afterwards  collected.  Then 
I  took  up  poetry  and  worked  very  hard  at  it  in- 
deed for  some  years,  producing  five  volumes,  which 
very  few  people  ever  read.  It  was  a  great  delight, 
writing  poetry,  and  I  have  masses  of  unpublished 
S3S 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

poems.  But  I  do  not  grudge  the  time  spent  on  it, 
because  I  think  it  taught  me  the  use  of  words. 
Then  came  two  volumes  of  stories,  mostly  told  or 
read  to  the  boys  in  my  house,  with  a  medieval  sort 
of  flavor— "The  HiU  of  Trouble"  and  "The 
Isles  of  Sunset." 

I  also  put  together  a  little  book  on  Tennyson 
which  has,  I  believe,  the  merit  of  containing  all  the 
most  interesting  anecdotes  about  him,  and  I  also 
wrote  the  RossetH  in  the  Men  of  Letters  Series,  a 
painstaking  book,  rather  rhetorical;  though  the 
truth  about  Rossetti  cannot  be  told,  even  if  it  could 
be  known. 

All  this  work  was  done  in  the  middle  of  hard 
professional  work,  with  a  boarding-house  and 
many  pupils.  I  will  dare  to  say  that  I  was  an 
active  and  diligent  schoolmaster,  and  writing  was 
only  a  recreation.  I  could  only  get  a  few  hours 
a  week  at  it,  and  it  never  interfered  with  my  main 
work. 

My  father  died  in  1896,  and  I  wrote  his  life  in 
two  big  volumes,  a  very  solid  piece  of  work;  but 
it  was  after  that,  I  think,  that  my  real  writing 
began.  I  believe  it  was  in  1899  that  I  slowly  com- 
posed "  The  House  of  Quiet,"  but  I  could  not 
234 


Authorship 

satisfy  myself  about  the  ending,  and  it  was  laid 
aside. 

Then  I  was  offered  the  task  of  editing  Queen 
Victoria's  letters.  I  resigned  my  mastership  with 
a  mixture  of  sorrow  and  relief.  The  work  was  in- 
teresting and  absorbing,  but  I  did  not  like  our 
system  of  education,  nor  did  I  believe  in  it.  But 
I  put  my  beliefs  into  a  little  book  called  **  The 
Schoolmaster,"  which  made  its  way. 

I  left  my  work  as  a  teacher  in  1903,  when  I  was 
forty-one.  "  The  House  of  Quiet "  appeared  in 
that  year  anonymously,  and  began  to  sell.  I  lived 
on  at  Eton  with  an  old  friend;  went  daily  up  to 
Windsor  Castle  and  toiled  through  volumes  of  pa- 
pers. But  I  found  that  it  was  not  possible  to  work 
more  than  a  few  hours  a  day  at  the  task  of  selec- 
tion, because  one's  judgment  got  fatigued  and 
blurred. 

The  sudden  cessation  of  heavy  professional  work 
made  itself  felt  in  an  extreme  zest  and  lightness 
of  spirit.  It  was  a  very  happy  and  delightful 
time.  I  was  living  among  friends,  who  were  all 
very  hard  at  work,  and  the  very  contrast  of  my 
freedom  with  their  servitude  was  enlivening.  I 
was  able,  too,  to  think  over  my  schoolmastering 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

experience ;  and  the  result  was  "  The  Upton  Let- 
ters," an  inconsequent  but  I  think  lively  book, 
also  published  anonymously  and  rather  disre- 
garded by  reviewers.  But  the  book  was  talked 
about  and  read;  and  for  the  next  year  or  two  I 
worked  with  indefatigable  zest  at  writing.  I 
brought  out  monographs  on  Edward  FitzGerald 
and  Walter  Pater;  I  wrote  "  The  Thread  of  Gold," 
which  also  succeeded;  and  in  the  next  year  I  set- 
tled at  Cambridge,  and  wrote  "  From  a  College 
Window  "  as  a  serial  in  the  "  Comhill,"  and  "  The 
Gate  of  Death,"  both  anonymously;  and  in  the 
following  year  "  Beside  Still  Waters  "  and  "  The 
Altar  Fire."  All  this  time  the  Queen's  letters  were 
going  quietly  on  in  the  background. 

I  have  written  half-a-dozen  books  since  then. 
But  that  is  how  I  began  my  work;  and  the  one 
point  which  is  worth  noticing  is  that  the  four 
books  which  have  sold  most  widely,  "  The  House 
of  Quiet,"  "  The  Upton  Letters,"  "  The  Thread  of 
Gold,"  and  the  "  College  Window,"  were  all  of  them 
issued  anonymously,  and  the  authorship  was  for  a 
considerable  time  undetected.  So  that  it  is  fair  to 
conclude  that  the  public  is  on  the  lookout  for  books 
which  interest  it  and  will  find  out  what  it  wants; 
gS6 


Authorship 

because  none  of  those  books  owed  anything  what- 
ever to  my  parentage  or  my  position  or  my  friends 
—  or  indeed  to  the  reviewers  either ;  and  it  proves 
the  truth  of  what  a  publisher  said  to  me  the  other 
day,  that  neither  reviews  nor  advertisements  will 
really  do  much  for  a  book ;  but  that  if  readers  be- 
gin to  talk  about  a  book  and  to  recommend  it,  it 
is  apt  to  go  ahead.  And,  further,  I  conclude  from 
the  fact  that  none  of  my  subsequent  books  have 
been  as  popular  as  these,  though  I  have  no  cause 
to  complain,  that  a  new  voice  and  new  ideas  are 
what  prove  attractive  —  and  perhaps  not  so  much 
new  ideas  as  familiar  ideas  which  have  not  been 
clearly  expressed  and  put  into  words.  There  was 
a  little  mystery  about  the  writer  then,  and  there 
is  no  mystery  now ;  every  one  knows  exactly  what 
to  expect;  and  the  new  generation  wants  a  fresh 
voice  and  a  different  way  of  putting  things. 


As  to  the  motive  force,  whatever  it  may  be,  that 
lies  behind  writing,  we  may  disengage  from  it  all 
subsidiary  motives,  such  as  the  desire  for  money, 
philanthropy,  professional  occupation;  but  the 
main  force  is,  I  think,  threefold.  The  motive  of 
^7 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

art  pure  and  simple,  the  desire  for  communication 
with  one's  fellows,  and  the  motive  of  ambition, 
which  may  almost  be  called  the  desire  for  applause. 
The  ultimate  instinct  of  art  is  the  expression  of 
the  sense  of  beauty.  A  scene,  or  a  character,  or 
an  idea,  or  an  emotion,  strikes  the  mind  as  being 
salient,  beautiful,  strange,  wonderful,  and  the  mind 
desires  to  record  it,  to  depict  it,  to  isolate  it,  to 
emphasize  it.  The  process  becomes  gradually,  as 
the  life  of  the  world  continues,  more  and  more  com- 
plex. It  seemed  enough  at  first  just  to  record; 
but  then  there  follows  the  desire  to  contrast,  to 
heighten  effects,  to  construct  elaborate  back- 
grounds ;  then  the  process  grows  still  more  refined, 
and  it  becomes  essential  to  lay  out  materials  in 
due  proportion,  and  to  clear  away  all  that  is  otiose 
or  confusing,  so  that  the  central  idea,  whatever  it 
is,  shall  stand  out  in  absolute  clarity  and  distinct- 
ness. Gradually  a  great  deal  of  art  becomes  tra- 
ditional and  conventional;  certain  forms  stereo- 
type themselves,  and  it  becomes  more  and  more  dif- 
ficult to  invent  a  new  form  of  any  kind.  When  art 
is  very  much  bound  by  tradition,  it  becomes  what 
is  called  classical,  and  makes  its  appeal  to  a  cul- 
tured circle ;  and  then  there  is  a  revolutionary  out- 
238 


Authorship 

burst  of  what  is  called  a  romantic  type,  which 
means  on  the  one  hand  a  weariness  of  the  old  tradi- 
tions and  longing  for  freedom,  and  on  the  other 
hand  a  corresponding  desire,  on  the  part  of  an  ex- 
tended and  less  cultured  circle,  for  art  of  a  more 
elastic  kind.  Literature  has  this  cyclic  ebb  and 
flow ;  but  what  is  romantic  in  one  age  tends  to  be- 
come classical  in  the  next,  as  the  new  departure  be- 
comes in  its  turn  traditional.  These  variations 
are  no  doubt  the  result  of  definite,  psychological 
laws,  at  present  little  understood.  The  renais- 
sance of  a  nation,  when  from  some  unascertained 
cause  there  is  a  fresh  outburst  of  interest  in  ideas, 
is  quite  unaccounted  for  by  logical  or  mathemat- 
ical laws  of  development.  The  French  Revolution 
and  the  corresponding  romantic  revival  in  England 
are  instances  of  this.  A  writer  like  Rousseau  does 
not  germinate  interest  in  social  and  emotional 
ideas,  but  merely  puts  into  attractive  form  a  num- 
ber of  ideas  vaguely  floating  in  numberless  minds. 
A  writer  like  Scott  indicates  a  sudden  repulsion 
in  many  minds  against  a  classical  tradition  grown 
sterile,  and  a  widespread  desire  to  extract  romantic 
emotions  from  a  forgotten  medieval  life.  Of 
course  a  romantic  writer  like  Scott  read  into  the 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Middle  Ages  a  number  of  emotions  which  were  not 
historically  there ;  and  the  romantic  writer,  gener- 
ally speaking,  tends  to  treat  of  life  in  its  more 
sublime  and  glowing  moments,  and  to  amass  bril- 
liant experience  and  absorbing  emotion  in  an  un- 
scientific way.  Just  now  we  are  beginning  to  re- 
volt against  this  over-emotionalized  treatment  of 
life,  and  realism  is  a  deliberate  attempt  to  present 
life  as  it  is  —  not  to  improve  upon  it  or  to  select 
it,  but  to  give  an  impression  of  its  complexity  as 
well  as  of  its  bleakness.  The  romanticist  typifies 
and  stereotypes  character,  the  realist  recognizes 
the  inconsistency  and  the  changeableness  of  person- 
ality. The  romanticist  presents  qualities  and 
moods  personified,  the  realist  depicts  the  flux  and 
variableness  of  mood,  and  the  effects  exerted  by 
characters  upon  each  other.  But  the  motive  is  ul- 
timately the  same,  only  the  romanticist  is  interested 
in  the  passion  and  inspiration  of  life,  the  realist 
more  in  the  facts  and  actual  stuff  of  life.  But  in 
both  cases  the  motive  is  the  same :  to  depict  and  to 
record  a  personal  impression  of  what  seems  wonder- 
ful and  strange. 

The  second  motive  in  art  is  the  desire  to  share 
and    communicate   experience.     Every    one   must 
MO 


Authorship 

know  how  intolerable  to  a  perceptive  person  lone- 
liness is  apt  to  be,  and  how  instinctive  is  the  need 
of  some  companion  with  whom  to  participate  in 
the  beauty  or  impressiveness  or  absurdity  of  a 
scene.  The  enjoyment  of  experience  is  diminished 
or  even  obliterated  if  one  has  to  taste  it  in  solitude. 
Of  course  there  are  people  so  constituted  as  to  be 
able  to  enjoy,  let  us  say,  a  good  dinner,  or  a  con- 
cert of  music,  or  a  play,  in  solitude ;  but  if  such  a 
person  has  the  instinct  of  expression,  he  enjoys  it 
all  half-consciously  as  an  amassing  of  material  for 
artistic  use ;  and  it  is  almost  inconceivable  that  an 
artist  should  exist  who  would  be  prepared  to  con- 
tinue writing  books  or  painting  pictures  or  making 
statues,  quite  content  to  put  them  aside  when  com- 
pleted, with  no  desire  to  submit  them  to  the  judg- 
ment of  the  world.  My  own  experience  is  that  the 
thought  of  sharing  one's  enjoyment  with  other 
people  is  not  a  very  conscious  feeling  while  one  is 
actually  engaged  in  writing.  At  the  moment,  the 
thought  of  expression  is  paramount,  and  the  de- 
light lies  simply  in  depicting  and  recording.  Yet 
the  impulse  to  hand  it  all  on  is  subconsciously 
there,  to  such  an  extent  that  if  I  knew  that  what 
I  wrote  could  never  pass  under  another  human  eye, 
241 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

I  have  little  doubt  that  I  should  very  soon  desist 
from  writing  altogether.  The  social  and  gregari- 
ous instinct  is  really  very  dominant  in  all  art ;  and 
all  writers  who  have  a  public  at  all  must  become 
aware  of  this  fact,  by  the  number  of  manuscripts 
which  are  submitted  to  them  by  would-be  authors, 
who  ask  for  advice  and  criticism  and  introductions 
to  publishers.  It  would  be  quite  easy  for  me,  if  I 
complied  fully  with  all  such  requests,  to  spend  the 
greater  part  of  my  time  in  the  labor  of  comment- 
ing on  these  manuscripts.  It  is  indeed  the  nearest 
that  many  amateurs  can  get  to  publication.  As 
Ruskin,  I  think,  once  said,  it  is  a  curious  irony  of 
authorship  that  if  a  writer  once  makes  a  success 
the  world  does  its  best,  by  inundating  him  with 
every  sort  of  request,  to  prevent  his  ever  repeating 
it.  I  suppose  that  painters  and  sculptors  do  not 
suffer  so  much  in  this  way,  because  it  is  not  easy 
to  send  about  canvases  or  statues  by  parcels  post. 
But  nothing  is  easier  than  to  slip  a  manuscript 
into  an  envelope  and  to  require  an  opinion  from  an 
author.  I  will  confess  that  I  very  seldom  refuse 
these  requests.  At  the  moment  at  which  I  write  I 
have  three  printed  novels  and  a  printed  book  of 
travel,  a  poem,  and  two  volumes  of  essays  in  manu- 


Authorship 

script  upon  my  table,  and  I  shall  make  shift  to 
say  something  in  reply,  though  except  for  the  satis- 
faction of  the  authors  in  question,  I  believe  that 
my  pains  will  be  wholly  thrown  away,  for  the  sim- 
ple reason  that  it  is  a  very  lengthy  business  to 
teach  any  one  how  to  write,  and  also  partly  because 
what  these  authors  desire  is  not  criticism  but  sym- 
pathy and  admiration. 

The  third  motive  which  underlies  the  practice 
of  art  is  undoubtedly  the  sense  of  performance  and 
the  desire  for  applause.  It  is  easy  from  a  pose  of 
dignity  and  high-mindedness  to  undervalue  and 
overlook  this.  But  it  may  safely  be  said  that 
when  a  man  challenges  the  attention  of  the  public, 
he  does  not  do  it  that  he  may  give  pleasure,  but 
that  he  may  receive  praise.  As  Elihu  the  Buzite 
said  with  such  exquisite  frankness  in  the  book  of 
Job,  "  I  will  speak,  that  I  may  be  refreshed ! " 
The  amateurs  who  send  their  work  for  inspection 
cannot  as  a  rule  bear  to  face  this  fact.  They  con- 
stantly say  that  they  wish  to  do  good,  or  to  com- 
municate enjoyment  and  pleasure.  To  be  honest, 
I  do  not  much  believe  that  the  motive  of  the  artist 
is  altruistic.  He  writes  for  his  own  enjoyment, 
perhaps,  but  he  publishes  that  his  skill  and  power 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

of  presentment  may  be  recognized  and  applauded. 
In  FitzGerald's  "  Letters  "  there  is  a  delightful 
story  of  a  parrot  who  had  one  accomplishment  — 
that  of  ruffling  up  his  feathers  and  rolling  his  eyes 
so  that  he  looked  like  an  owl.  When  the  other  do- 
mestic pets  were  doing  their  tricks,  the  owner  of 
the  parrot,  to  prevent  its  feelings  being  hurt,  used 
carefully  to  request  it  "  to  do  its  little  owl."  And 
the  truth  is  that  we  most  of  us  want  to  do  our  lit- 
tle owl.  Stevenson  said  candidly  that  applause 
was  the  breath  of  life  to  an  artist.  Many,  indeed, 
find  the  money  they  make  by  their  work  delightful 
as  a  symbol  of  applause  in  the  sense  of  Shel- 
ley's- fine  dictum,  "  Fame  is  love  disguised."  It  is 
not  a  wholly  mean  motive,  because  many  of  us  are 
beset  by  an  idea  that  the  shortest  way  to  be  loved 
is  to  be  admired.  It  is  a  great  misapprehension, 
because  admiration  breeds  jealousy  quite  as  often 
as  it  breeds  affection,  indeed  oftener!  But  from 
the  child  that  plays  its  little  piece,  or  the  itinerant 
musician  that  blows  a  flat  cornet  in  the  street,  to 
the  great  dramatist  or  musician,  the  same  desire 
to  produce  a  favorable  impression  holds  good. 

I  once  dined  alone  with  a  celebrated  critic,  who 
indicated,  as  we  sat  smoking  in  his  study,  a  great 


Authorship 

pile  of  typewritten  sheets  upon  his  table.  "  That 
is  the  next  novel  of  So-and-so,"  he  said,  mention- 
ing a  well-known  novelist ;  "  he  asks  me  for  a  candid 
criticism;  but  unfortunately  the  only  language  he 
now  understands  is  the  language  of  adulation !  " 

That  is  a  true  if  melancholy  fact,  plainly 
stated;  that  to  many  an  artist  to  be  said  to  have 
done  well  is  almost  more  important  than  to  know 
that  the  thing  has  been  well  done.  It  is  not  a 
wholesome  frame  of  mind,  perhaps;  but  it  cannot 
be  overlooked  or  gainsaid. 

Even  the  greatest  of  authors  are  susceptible  to 
it.  Robert  Browning,  who  except  for  an  occa- 
sional outburst  of  fury  against  his  critics,  was  far 
more  tolerant  of  and  patient  under  misunderstand- 
ing than  most  poets,  said  in  a  moment  of  elated 
frankness,  when  he  received  an  ovation  from  the 
students  of  a  university,  that  he  had  been  waiting 
for  that  all  his  life ;  Tennyson  managed  to  combine 
a  hatred  of  publicity  with  a  thirst  for  fame. 
Wordsworth,  as  Carlyle  pungently  said,  used  to 
pay  an  annual  visit  to  London  in  later  life  "  to 
collect  his  little  bits  of  tribute."  And  even  though 
Keats  could  say  that  his  own  criticism  of  his  own 
works  had  given  him  far  more  pain  than  the  opin- 
^45 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

ions  of  any  outside  critics,  yet  the  possibility  of 
recognition  and  applause  must  inevitably  continue 
to  be  one  of  the  chief  raisons  d*etre  of  art. 

But  the  main  motive  of  writing  lies  in  the  crea- 
tive instinct,  pure  and  simple;  and  the  success  of 
all  literary  art  must  depend  upon  the  personality 
of  the  writer,  his  vitality  and  perception,  his  com- 
bination of  exuberance  and  control.  The  reason 
why  there  are  comparatively  so  few  great  writers 
is  that  authorship,  to  be  wholly  successful,  needs 
so  rich  an  outfit  of  gifts,  creative  thought,  emotion, 
style,  clearness,  charm,  emphasis,  vocabulary,  per- 
severance. Many  writers  have  some  of  these  gifts ; 
and  the  essential  difference  of  amateur  writing  from 
professional  writing  is  that  the  amateur  has,  as  a 
rule,  little  power  of  rejection  and  selection,  or  of 
producing  a  due  proportion  and  an  even  surface; 
amateur  poetry  is  characterized  by  good  lines 
strung  together  by  weak  and  patchy  rigmaroles  — 
like  a  block  of  unworked  ore,  in  which  the  precious 
particles  glitter  confusedly ;  while  the  artistic  poem 
is  a  piece  of  chased  jewel-work.  It  is  true  that 
great  poets  have  often  written  hurriedly  and 
swiftly ;  but  probably  there  is  an  intense  selective- 
ness  at  work  in  the  background  all  the  time,  pro- 
246 


Authorship 

duced  by  instinctive  taste  as  well  as  by  careful 
practice. 

Amateur  prose  again  has  an  unevenness  of  tex- 
ture and  arrangement,  good  ideas  and  salient 
thoughts  floundering  in  a  vapid  and  inferior  sub- 
stance ;  it  is  often  not  appreciated  by  amateurs  how 
much  depends  on  craftsmanship;  I  have  known 
brilliant  and  accomplished  conversationalists  who 
have  been  persuaded,  perhaps  in  mature  life,  to 
attempt  a  more  definite  piece  of  writing ;  when  it  is 
pathetic  to  see  suggestive  and  even  brilliant 
thought  hopelessly  befogged  by  unemphatic  and 
disorderly  statement.  Still  more  difficult  is  it  to 
make  people  of  fine  emotions  and  swift  perceptions 
understand  that  such  qualities  are  only  the  basis  of 
authorship,  and  that  the  vital  necessity  for  self- 
expression  is  to  have  a  knowledge,  acquired  or  in- 
stinctive, of  the  extremely  symbolical  and  even 
traditional  methods  and  processes  of  representa- 
tion. Vivid  life  is  not  the  same  thing  as  vivid  art ; 
art  is  a  sort  of  recondite  and  narrow  symbolism, 
by  which  the  word,  the  phrase,  the  salient  touch, 
represents,  suggests,  hints  the  larger  vision.  It  is 
in  the  reducing  of  broad  effects  to  minute  effects 
that  the  mastery  of  art  lies. 
Ml 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Good  work  has  often  been  done  for  the  sake  of 
money;  I  could  name  some  effective  living  writers 
who  never  willingly  put  pen  to  paper,  and  would  be 
quite  content  to  express  themselves  in  familiar  talk, 
or  even  to  live  in  vivid  reflection,  if  they  were  not 
compelled  to  earn  their  living.  Ambition  will  do 
something  to  mold  an  artist;  the  philanthropic 
motive  may  put  some  wind  into  his  sails,  but  by 
itself  it  has  little  artistic  value.  Speaking  for  my- 
self, in  so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  disentangle  com- 
plex motives,  the  originating  impulse  has  never 
been  with  me  pecuniary,  or  ambitious,  or  philan- 
thropic, or  even  communicative.  It  has  been 
simply  and  solely  the  intense  pleasure  of  putting  as 
emphatically  and  beautifully  and  appropriately  as 
possible  into  words,  an  idea  of  a  definite  kind. 
The  creative  impulse  is  not  like  any  other  that  I 
know ;  some  thought,  scene,  picture,  darts  spontane- 
ously into  the  mind.  The  intelligence  instantly 
sets  to  work  arranging,  subdividing,  foreseeing,  ex- 
•*;ending,  amplifying.  Much  is  done  by  some  un- 
conscious cerebration ;  for  I  have  often  planned  the 
development  of  a  thought  in  a  few  minutes,  and 
then  dropped  it ;  yet  an  hour  or  two  later  the  whole 
thing  seems  ready  to  be  written. 
^48 


Authorship 

Moreover,  the  actual  start  is  a  pleasure  so  keen 
and  delightful  as  to  have  an  almost  physical  and 
sensuous  joy  about  it.  The  very  act  of  writing 
has  become  so  mechanical  that  there  is  nothing  in 
the  least  fatiguing  about  it,  though  I  have  heard 
some  writers  say  otherwise;  while  the  process  is 
actually  going  on,  one  loses  all  count  of  time  and 
place;  the  clock  on  the  mantelpiece  seems  to  leap 
miraculously  forward ;  while  the  mind  knows  exactly 
when  to  desist,  so  that  the  leaving  off  is  like  the 
turning  of  a  tap,  the  stream  being  instantaneously 
cut  off.  I  do  not  recollect  having  ever  forced  my- 
self to  write,  except  under  the  stress  of  illness,  nor 
do  I  ever  recollect  its  being  anything  but  the  pur- 
est pleasure  from  beginning  to  end. 

In  saying  this  I  know  that  I  am  confessing  my- 
self to  be  a  frank  improvisatore;  and  where  such  art 
fails,  as  mine  often  fails,  is  in  a  lack  of  the  power 
of  concentration  and  revision,  which  is  the  last  and 
greatest  necessity  of  high  art.  But  I  owe  to  it  the 
happiest  and  brightest  experiences  of  life,  to  which 
no  other  pleasure  is  even  dimly  comparable.  Easy 
writing,  it  is  said,  makes  hard  reading;  but  is  it 
true  that  hard  writing  ever  makes  easy  reading? 

The  end  of  the  matter  would  seem  to  be  that  if 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

the  creative  impulse  is  very  strong  in  a  man  it  will 
probably  find  its  way  out.  If  ordinary  routine- 
work  destroys  it,  it  is  probably  not  very  robust; 
yet  authorship  is  not  to  be  reconmiended  as  a  pro- 
fession, because  the  prizes  are  few,  the  way  hard, 
the  disappointments  poignant  and  numerous;  and 
though  there  are  perhaps  few  greater  benefactors 
to  the  human  race  than  beautiful  and  noble  writers, 
yet  there  are  many  natures  both  noble  and  beauti- 
ful who  would  like  to  approach  life  that  way,  but 
who,  from  lack  of  the  complete  artistic  equipment, 
from  technical  deficiencies,  from  failure  in  crafts- 
manship, must  find  some  other  way  of  enriching  the 
blood  of  the  world. 


^60 


HERB  MOLY  AND  HEARTSEASE 


XIV 
HERB  MOLY  AND  HEARTSEASE 


WHEN  Odysseus  was  walking  swiftly,  with 
rage  in  his  heart,  through  the  island  of 
Circe,  to  find  out  what  had  befallen  his  compan- 
ions, he  would  have  assuredly  gone  to  his  doom  in 
the  great  stone  house  of  the  witch,  the  smoke  of 
which  went  up  among  the  thickets,  if  Hermes  had 
not  met  him. 

The  God  came  in  the  likeness  of  a  beautiful  youth 
with  the  first  down  of  manhood  upon  his  lips.  He 
chid  the  much-enduring  one  for  his  rash  haste,  and 
gave  him  what  we  should  call  not  very  good  advice ; 
but  he  also  gave  him  something  which  was  worth 
more  than  any  good  advice,  a  charm  which  should 
prevail  against  the  spells  of  the  Nymph,  which 
he  might  carry  in  his  bosom  and  be  unscathed. 

It  was  an  ugly  enough  herb,  a  prickly  plant 
which  sprawled  low  in  the  shadow  of  the  trees. 
253 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Its  root  was  black,  and  it  had  a  milk-white  flower ; 
the  Gods  called  it  Moly,  and  no  mortal  strength 
could  avail  to  pull  it  from  the  soil;  but  as 
Odysseus  says,  telling  the  story,  "  There  is  nothing 
which  the  Gods  cannot  do  " ;  and  it  came  up  easily 
enough  at  the  touch  of  the  beardless  youth.  We 
know  how  the  spell  worked,  how  Odysseus  rescued 
his  companions,  and  how  Circe  told  him  the  way  to 
the  regions  of  the  dead;  but  even  so  he  did  not 
wholly  escape  from  her  evil  enchantment ! 

No  one  knows  what  the  herb  Moly  really  was; 
some  say  it  was  the  mandrake,  that  plant  of  dark- 
ness, which  was  thought  to  bear  a  dreadful  re- 
semblance, in  its  pale  swollen  stalk  and  outstretched 
arms,  to  a  tortured  human  form,  and  to  utter 
moans  as  it  was  dragged  from  the  soil;  but  later 
on  it  was  used  as  the  name  for  a  kind  of  garlic, 
employed  as  a  flavoring  for  highly-spiced  salads. 
The  Greeks  were  not,  it  seems,  very  scientific 
botanists,  so  far  as  nomenclature  went,  and  applied 
any  name  that  was  handy  to  any  plant  that  struck 
their  fancy.  They  believed,  no  doubt,  that  things 
had  secret  and  intimate  names  of  their  own,  which 
254 


Herh  Moly  and  Heartsease 

were  known  perhaps  to  the  Gods,  but  that  men 
must  just  call  them  what  they  could. 

It  would  be  best  perhaps  to  leave  the  old  allegory 
to  speak  for  itself,  because  poetical  thoughts  are 
often  mishandled,  and  suffer  base  transformation 
at  the  hands  of  interpreters ;  but  for  all  that  it  is 
a  pretty  trade  to  expound  things  seen  in  dreams 
and  visions,  or  obscurely  detected  out  of  the  corner 
of  the  eye  in  magical  places ;  while  the  best  of  really 
poetical  things  is  that  they  have  a  hundred  mysti- 
cal interpretations,  none  of  which  is  perhaps  the 
right  one;  because  the  poet  sees  things  in  a  flash, 
and  describes  his  visions,  without  knowing  what 
they  mean,  or  indeed  if  they  have  any  meaning 
at  all. 

A  place  like  a  university,  where  one  alights  for 
an  adventure,  in  the  course  of  a  long  voyage,  is  in 
many  ways  like  the  island  of  Circe.  There  is  the 
great  stone  mansion  with  its  shining  doors  and 
guarded  cloisters.  It  is  a  place  of  many  enchant- 
ments and  various  delights.  There  are  mysterious 
people  going  to  and  fro,  whose  business  it  is  hard 
to  discern:  there  are  plenty  of  bowls  and  dishes, 
and  water  pleasantly  warmed  for  the  bath.  Circe 
herself  had  a  private  life  of  her  own,  and  much 
255 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

curious  information:  she  was  not  forever  turning 
people  into  pigs ;  and  indeed  why  she  did  it  at  all 
is  not  easy  to  discover!  It  amused  her,  and  she 
felt  more  secure  perhaps,  when  her  visitors  were 
safely  housed,  grunting  and  splashing  about  to- 
gether. One  must  not  press  an  allegory  too 
closely,  but  in  any  place  where  human  beings  con- 
sort, there  is  always  some  turning  of  men  into  pigs, 
even  if  they  afterwards  resume  their  shape  again, 
and  shed  tears  of  relief  at  the  change. 

S 

My  purpose  here  is  to  speculate  a  little  upon 
what  the  herb  Moly  can  be,  how  it  can  be  found  and 
used.  Hermes,  the  messenger  of  the  Gods,  is  al- 
ways ready  to  pull  it  up  for  any  one  who  really 
requires  it.  And  just  because  "  the  isle,"  as 
Shakspere  says,  "  is  full  of  noises  —  sounds  and 
sweet  airs,"  it  is  a  matter  of  concern  to  know 
which  of  them  "  give  delight  and  hurt  not,"  and 
which  of  them  lead  only  to  manger  and  sty.  My 
discourse  is  not  planned  in  a  spirit  of  heavy 
rectitude,  or  from  any  desire  to  shower  good  ad- 
vice about,  as  from  a  pepper-pot.  Indeed  I  believe 
that  there  are  many  things  in  the  correct  conven- 
9.^Q 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

tional  code  which  are  very  futile  and  grotesque; 
some  which  are  directly  hurtful;  and  further  that 
there  are  many  things  quite  outside  the  code  which 
are  both  fine  and  beautiful ;  because  the  danger  of 
all  civilized  societies  is  that  the  members  of  it  take 
the  prevarling  code  for  granted ;  do  not  trouble  to 
think  what  it  means,  accept  it  as  the  way  of  life, 
and  walk  contentedly  enough,  like  the  beetle  in 
the  bone,  which,  as  we  know,  can  neither  turn  nor 
miss  its  way. 

To  fall  feebly  into  the  conventions  of  a  place 
takes  away  all  the  joyful  spirit  of  adventure;  but 
the  little  island  set  in  the  ocean,  with  its  loud  sea- 
beaches,  its  upstanding  promontories,  its  wooded 
glades,  its  open  spaces,  and  above  all  the  great 
house  standing  among  its  lawns,  is  a  place  of  ad- 
venture above  everything,  with  unknown  forces  at 
work,  untamed  emotions,  swift  currents  of  thought, 
many  choices,  strange  delights ;  and  then  there  is 
the  shadowy  sea  beyond,  with  all  its  crested  bil- 
lows rolling  in,  and  other  islands  looming  out  be- 
yond the  breakers,  at  which  the  ship  may  touch, 
before  it  finds  its  way  to  the  regions  of  death  and 
silence. 

I  myself  had  my  own  time  of  adventure,  took 
257 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

ship  again,  and  voyaged  far;  and  now  that  I  have 
come  back  again  to  the  little  island  with  all  its 
thickets,  I  wish  to  retrace  in  thought,  if  I  can, 
some  of  the  adventures  which  befell  me,  and  what 
they  brought  me,  and  to  speak  too  of  adventures 
which  I  missed,  either  out  of  diffidence  or  folly. 
I  am  not  at  all  sure  whether  Hermes,  whom  I  cer- 
tainly encountered,  ever  gave  me  a  plant  of  Moly, 
or,  if  I  did  indeed  receive  it,  what  use  I  made  of  it. 
But  I  knew  others  who  certainly  had  the  herb  at 
their  hearts,  and  as  certainly  others  who  had  not; 
and  I  will  try  and  tell  what  he  thinks  it  is  and  how 
it  may  be  found.  It  is  deeply  planted,  no  doubt; 
its  root  is  as  black  as  death,  and  its  flower  as  pure 
as  the  light ;  while  the  leaves  are  prickly  and  cling- 
ing; it  is  not  a  plant  for  trim  gardens,  nor  to  be 
grown  in  rows  in  the  furrow ;  it  is  hard  to  come  by, 
and  harder  still  to  extract ;  but  having  once  at- 
tained it,  the  man  who  bears  it  knows  that  there  are 
certain  things  he  cannot  do  again,  and  certain 
spells  which  henceforth  have  no  power  over  him ; 
and  though  it  does  not  deliver  him  from  all  dangers, 
he  will  not  at  all  events  be  penned  with  the  regretful 
swine,  that  had  lost  all  human  attributes  except  the 
power  of  shedding  tears. 

258 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

Now  I  shall  drop  all  allegories  for  the  present, 
because  it  is  confusing  both  to  writers  and  readers 
to  be  always  speaking  of  two  things  in  terms  of 
each  other.  And  I  will  say  first  that  when  I  was 
at  college  myself  as  a  young  man,  I  seemed  to 
myself  to  be  forever  looking  for  something  which 
I  could  not  find.  It  was  not  always  so ;  there  were 
plenty  of  contented  hours,  when  one  played  a  game, 
or  sate  over  the  fire  afterwards  with  tea  and 
tobacco,  talking  about  it,  or  talking  about  other 
people  —  I  do  not  often  remember  talking  about 
anything  else,  except  on  set  occasions  —  or  later 
in  the  evening  some  one  played  a  piano  not  very 
well,  or  we  sang  songs,  not  very  tunefully ;  or  one 
sate  down  to  work,  and  got  interested,  if  not  in  the 
work  itself,  at  least  in  doing  it  well  and  completely. 
I  am  not  going  to  pretend,  as  elderly  men  often  do 
with  infinite  absurdity,  that  I  did  no  work,  and 
scored  off  dons  and  proctors,  and  broke  every  rule, 
and  defied  God  and  man,  and  spent  money  which 
I  had  not  got,  and  lived  a  generally  rake-hell  life. 
There  are  very  few  of  my  friends  who  did  these 
things,  and  they  have  mostly  fallen  in  the  race 
£59 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

long  ago,  leaving  a  poor  and  rueful  memory  behind 
them.  Nor  do  I  see  why  it  is  so  glorious  to  pre- 
tend to  have  done  such  things,  especially  if  one  has 
not  done  them !  I  was  a  sober  citizen  enough,  with 
plenty  of  faults  and  failings;  and  this  is  not  a 
tract  to  convert  the  wicked,  who  indeed  are  pro- 
viding plenty  of  materials  to  effect  their  own  con- 
version in  ways  very  various  and  all  very  uncom- 
fortable! I  should  like  it  rather  to  be  read  by 
well-meaning  people,  who  share  perhaps  the  same 
experience  as  myself,  the  experience,  as  I  have  said, 
of  searching  for  something  which  I  could  not  find. 
Sometimes  in  those  days,  I  will  make  bold  to  con- 
fess, I  read  a  book,  or  heard  an  address  or  sermon, 
or  talked  to  some  interesting  and  attractive  person, 
and  felt  suddenly  that  I  was  on  the  track  of  it; 
was  it  something  I  wanted,  or  was  it  something  I 
had  lost?  I  could  not  tell!  But  I  knew  that  if 
I  could  find  it,  I  should  never  be  in  any  doubt  again 
how  to  act  or  what  to  choose.  It  was  not  a  set  of 
rules  I  wanted  —  there  were  rules  enough  and  to 
spare,  some  of  them  made  for  us,  and  many  which 
we  made  for  ourselves.  We  mapped  out  every 
part  of  life  which  was  left  unmapped  by  the 
dons,  and  we  knew  exactly  what  was  correct 
260 


Herh  Moly  and  Heartsease 
and  what  was  not;  and  oh,  how  dull  much  of  it 


was  I 


But  I  wanted  a  motive  of  some  sort,  an  aim;  I 
wanted  to  know  what  I  was  out  for,  as  we  now 
say.  I  did  not  see  what  the  point  of  much  of 
my  work  was,  or  know  what  my  profession  was  to 
be;  I  did  not  see  why  I  did,  for  social  reasons,  so 
many  things  which  did  not  interest  me,  or  why  I 
pretended  to  think  them  interesting.  I  would  sit, 
one  of  half-a-dozen  men,  the  air  dim  with  smoke, 

telling  stories   about   other  people.     A had 

had  a  row  with  B ,  he  would  not  go  properly 

into  training,  he  had  lunched  before  a  match  off  a 
tumbler  of  sherry  and  a  cigar,  he  was  too  good  to 
be  turned  out  of  the  team  —  it  was  amusing 
enough,  but  it  certainly  was  not  what  I  was  look- 
ing for.  ' 

Then  one  made  friends ;  it  dawned  upon  one  sud- 
denly  what   a    charming   person    C was,    so 

original  and  amusing,  so  observant;  it  became  a 
thrilling  thing  to  meet  him  in  the  court ;  one  asked 
him  to  tea,  one  talked  and  told  him  everything.  A 
week  later,  one  seemed  to  have  got  to  the  end  of 
it ;  the  path  came  to  a  stop :  there  was  not  much  in 
it,  after  all,  and  presently  he  was  rather  an  ass; 
261 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

he  looked  gloomily  at  one  when  one  met  him,  but 
one  was  off  on  another  chase;  this  idealizing  of 
people  was  rather  a  mistake;  the  pleasure  was  in 
the  exploration,  and  there  was  very  little  to  ex- 
plore; it  was  better  to  have  a  comfortable  set  of 
friends  with  no  nonsense;  and  yet  that  was  dull 
too.  That  was  certainly  not  the  thing  one  was  in 
search  of. 

What  was  it  then?  One  saw  it  like  a  cloud- 
shadow  racing  over  the  hill,  like  a  bird  upon  the 
wing.  The  perfect  friend  could  not  help  one,  for 
his  perfections  waned  and  faded.  Yet  there  was 
certainly  something  there,  singing  like  a  bird  in  the 
wood;  only  when  one  reached  the  tree,  the  bird 
was  gone,  and  another  song  was  in  the  air.  It 
seemed  then  at  first  sight  as  if  one  was  in  search  of 
an  emotion  of  some  kind,  and  not  only  a  solitary 
emotion,  like  that  which  touched  the  spirit  at  the 
sudden  falling  of  the  ripe  rose-petals  from  their 
stem,  or  at  the  sight  of  the  far-off  plain,  with  all 
its  woods  and  waters  framed  between  the  out- 
running hills,  or  at  the  sound  of  organ-music  steal- 
ing out  of  the  soaring  climbing  woodwork  with  all 
its  golden  pipes,  on  setting  foot  in  the  dim  and 
fragrant  church;  they  were  all  sweet  enough,  but 
262 


Herh  Moly  and  Heartsease 

the  mind  turned  to  some  kindred  soul  at  hand 
with  whom  it  could  all  be  shared ;  and  the  recogni- 
tion of  some  other  presence,  visibly  beckoning 
through  gesture  and  form  and  smiling  wide-opened 
eyes,  that  seemed  the  best  that  could  be  attained, 
that  nearness  and  rapture  of  welcome ;  and  then  the 
moment  passed,  and  that  too  ebbed  away. 

It  was  something  more  than  that!  because  in 
bleak  solitary  pondering  moments,  there  stood  up, 
like  a  massive  buttressed  crag,  a  duty,  not  born  of 
whispered  secrets  or  of  relations,  however  delicate 
and  awestruck,  with  other  hearts,  but  a  stern  un- 
compromising thing,  that  seemed  a  relation  with 
something  quite  apart  from  man,  a  Power  swift 
and  vehement  and  often  terrible,  to  whom  one  owed 
an  unmistakable  fealty  in  thought  and  act. 
Righteousness!  That  old-fashioned  thing  on 
which  the  Jews,  one  was  taught,  set  much  store, 
which  one  had  misconceived  as  something  born  of 
piety  and  ceremony,  and  which  now  revealed  itself 
as  a  force  uncompromisingly  there,  which  it  was 
impossible  to  overlook  or  to  disobey;  if  one  did 
disobey  it,  something  hurt  and  wounded  cried  out 
faintly  in  the  soul ;  and  so  it  dawned  upon  one  that 
this  was  a  force,  not  only  not  developed  out  of 
263 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

piety  and  worship,  but  of  which  all  piety  and  wor- 
ship were  but  the  frail  vesture,  which  half  veiled 
and  half  hampered  the  massive  stride  and  stroke. 

It  did  not  attract  or  woo;  it  rather  demanded 
and  frightened;  but  it  became  clear  enough  that 
any  inner  peace  was  impossible  without  it;  and 
little  by  little  one  learned  to  recognize  that  there 
was  no  trace  of  it  in  many  conventional  customs 
and  precepts ;  those  could  be  slighted  and  disre- 
garded ;  but  there  were  still  things  which  the  spirit 
did  truly  recognize  as  vices  and  sins,  abominable 
and  defiling,  with  which  no  trafiicking  was  possible. 

This  then  was  clear;  that  if  one  was  to  find  the 
peace  one  desired  —  it  was  that,  it  was  an  un- 
troubled peace,  a  journey  taken  with  a  sense  of 
aim  and  liberty  that  one  hoped  to  make  —  then 
these  were  two  certain  elements ;  a  concurrence 
with  a  few  great  and  irresistible  prohibitions  and 
positive  laws  of  conduct,  though  these  were  far 
fewer  than  one  had  supposed ;  and  next  to  that,  a 
sense  of  brotherhood  and  fellowship  with  those  who 
seemed  to  be  making  their  way  harmoniously  and 
finely  towards  the  same  goal  as  oneself.  To  under- 
stand and  love  these  spirits,  to  be  understood  and 
loved  by  them,  that  was  a  vital  necessity. 
264 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

But  this  must  be  added ;  that  the  sense  of  duty  of 
which  I  speak,  which  rose  sturdily  and  fiercely 
above  the  shifting  forms  of  life,  like  a  peak  above 
the  forest,  did  not  appear  at  once  either  desirable 
or  even  beautiful.  It  blocked  the  view  and  the  way ; 
it  forbade  one  to  stray  or  loiter ;  but  the  obedience 
one  reluctantly  gave  to  it  came  simply  from  a  real- 
ization of  its  strength  and  of  its  presence.  It 
stood  for  an  order  of  some  kind,  which  interfered 
at  many  points  with  one's  hopes  and  desires,  but 
with  which  one  was  compelled  to  make  terms,  be- 
cause it  could  and  did  strike,  pitilessly  and  even 
vindictively,  if  one  neglected  and  transgressed  its 
monitions;  and  thus  the  quest  became  an  attempt 
to  find  what  stood  behind  it,  and  to  discover  if 
there  was  any  PersonaHty  behind  it,  with  which 
one  could  link  oneself,  so  as  to  be  conscious  of  its 
intentions  or  its  goodwill.  Was  it  a  Power  that 
could  love  and  be  loved  .f^  Or  was  it  only  mechani- 
cal and  soulless,  a  condition  of  life,  which  one 
might  dread  and  even  abhor,  but  which  could  not 
be  trifled  with.? 

Because  that  seemed  the  secret  of  all  the  happi- 
ness of  life  —  the  meeting,  with  a  sense  of  intimate 
security,  something  warm  and  breathing,  that  had 
265 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

need  of  me  as  I  of  it,  that  could  smile  and  clasp, 
foster  and  pity,  admire  and  adore,  and  in  the  em- 
brace of  which  one  could  feel  one's  hope  and  joy 
grow  and  stir  by  contact  and  trust.  That  was 
what  one  found  in  the  hearts  about  one's  path; 
and  the  wonder  was,  did  some  similar  chance  of 
embracing,  clasping,  trusting,  and  loving  that 
vaster  power  await  one  in  the  dim  spaces  beyond 
the  fields  and  homes  of  earth? 

I  guessed  that  it  was  so,  but  saw,  as  in  a  faint 
vision,  that  many  harsh  events,  sorry  mischances, 
blows  and  wounds  and  miseries,  hated  and  dreaded 
and  endured,  lay  between  me  and  that  larger 
Heart.  But  I  perceived  at  last,  with  terror  and 
mistrust,  that  the  adventure  did  indeed  lie  there; 
that  I  should  often  be  disdained  and  repulsed,  un- 
tended  and  unheeded,  bitterly  disillusioned,  shaken 
out  of  ease  and  complacency,  but  assuredly  folded 
to  that  greater  Heart  at  last. 

5 

And  then  there  followed  a  different  phase.     Up 

to  the  very  end  of  the  university  period,  the  same 

uneasiness  continued ;  then  quite  suddenly  the  door 

opened,  one  slipped  into  the  world,  one  found  one's 

^66 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

place.  There  were  instantaneously  real  things  to 
be  done,  real  money  to  earn,  men  and  women  to 
live  with  and  work  with,  to  conciliate  or  to  resist. 
A  mist  rolled  away  from  my  eyes.  What  a  fan- 
tastic life  it  had  been  hitherto,  how  sheltered,  how 
remote  from  actuality!  I  seemed  to  have  been 
building  up  a  rococo  stucco  habitation  out  of 
whims  and  fancies,  adding  a  room  here  and  a  row 
of  pinnacles  there,  all  utterly  bizarre  and  gro- 
tesque. Vague  dreams  of  poetry  and  art,  nothing 
penetrated  or  grasped,  a  phrase  here,  a  fancy 
there ;  one's  ideal  of  culture  seemed  like  Ophelia  in 
"  Hamlet,"  a  distracted  nymph  stuck  all  over  with 
flowers  and  anxious  to  explain  the  sentimental 
value  of  each ;  the  friendships  themselves  —  they 
had  nothing  stable  about  them  either;  they  were 
not  based  upon  any  common  aim,  any  real  mutual 
concern ;  they  were  nothing  more  than  the  enshrin- 
ing of  a  fugitive  charm,  the  tracking  of  some 
bright-eyed  fawn  or  wild-haired  dryad  to  its  secret 
haunt,  only  to  find  the  bird  flown  and  the  nest 
warm.  But  now  there  was  little  time  for  fancies; 
there  was  a  real  burden  to  carry,  a  genuine  task 
to  perform;  day  after  day  slipped  past,  like  the 
furrows  in  a  field  seen  from  some  speeding  car ;  the 
^67 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

contented  mind,  pleasantly  wearied  at  the  end  of 
the  busy  day,  heaved  a  light-hearted  sigh  of  relief, 
and  turned  to  some  recreation  with  zest  and  delight. 
It  was  not  that  the  quest  had  been  successful;  it 
seemed  rather  that  there  was  no  quest  at  all,  and 
that  it  was  the  joy  of  daily  work  that  had  been 
the  missing  factor  .  .  .  the  weeks  melted  into 
months,  the  months  became  years. 

Meanwhile  the  earth  and  air,  as  well  as  the  com- 
rades and  companions  of  the  pilgrimage,  were 
touched  with  a  different  light  of  beauty.  The 
beauty  was  there  and  in  even  fuller  measure.  The 
sun  in  the  hot  summer  days  poured  down  upon  the 
fragrant  garden,  with  all  its  bright  flower-beds,  its 
rose-laden  alleys,  its  terraced  walks,  its  green- 
shaded  avenues ;  the  autumn  mists  lay  blue  and 
faint  across  the  far  pastures,  and  the  hill  climbed 
smoothly  to  its  green  summit;  or  the  spring  came 
back  after  the  winter  silence  with  all  its  languor 
of  unfolding  life,  while  bush  and  covert  wove  their 
screens  of  dense-tapestried  foliage,  to  conceal  what 
mysteries  of  love  and  delight !  the  faces  or  gestures 
of  those  about  one  took  on  a  new  significance,  a 
richer  beauty,  a  larger  interest,  because  one  began 
to  guess  how  experience  molded  them,  by  what  aims 
268 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

and  hopes  they  were  graven  and  refined,  by  what 
failures  they  were  obliterated  and  coarsened.  But 
the  difference  was  this,  that  one  was  not  now 
forever  trying  to  make  these  charms  one's  own,  to 
establish  private  understandings  or  mutual  rela- 
tions. It  was  enough  now  to  observe  them  as  one 
could,  to  interpret  them,  to  enjoy  them,  and  to 
pass  by.  The  acquisitive  sense  was  gone,  and  one 
neither  claimed  nor  grasped ;  one  admired  and  won- 
dered and  went  forwards.  And  this  again  seemed 
a  wholesome  balance  of  thought,  for,  as  the  desire 
to  take  diminished,  the  power  of  interpreting  and 
enjoying  grew. 

But  very  gradually  a  slow  shadow  began  to  fall, 
like  the  shadow  of  a  great  hill  that  reaches  far  out 
over  the  plain.  I  passed  one  day  an  old  church- 
yard deep  in  the  country,  and  saw  the  leaning 
headstones  and  the  grassy  barrows  of  the  dead. 
A  shudder  passed  through  me,  a  far-off  chill,  at 
the  thought  that  it  must  come  to  this  after  all; 
that  however  rich  and  intricate  and  delightful  life 
w^s  —  and  it  was  all  three  —  the  time  would  come, 
perhaps  with  pain  and  languid  suffering,  when  one 
must  let  all  the  beautiful  threads  out  of  one's 
hands,  and  compose  oneself,  with  such  fortitude 
269 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

as  one  could  muster,  for  the  long  sleep.  And  then 
one  called  reason  to  one's  aid,  and  bade  her  ex- 
pound the  mystery,  and  say  that  just  as  no  small- 
est particle  of  matter  could  be  disintegrated 
utterly,  or  subtracted  from  the  sum  of  things,  so, 
and  with  infinitely  greater  certainty,  could  no 
pulse  or  desire  or  motion  of  the  spirit  be  brought 
to  nought.  True,  the  soul  lived  like  a  bird  in  a 
cage,  hopping  from  perch  to  perch,  slumbering  at 
times,  moping  dolefully,  or  uttering  its  song;  but 
it  was  even  more  essentially  imperishable  than  the 
body  that  obeyed  and  enfolded  and  at  last  failed 
it.  So  said  Reason;  and  yet  that  brought  no 
hope,  so  dear  and  familiar  had  life  become, —  the 
well-known  house,  the  accustomed  walks,  the  daily 
work,  the  forms  of  friend  and  comrade.  It  was 
just  those  things  that  one  wanted;  and  reason 
could  only  say  that  one  must  indeed  leave  them 
and  begone,  and  she  could  not  look  forwards  nor 
forecast  anything;  she  could  but  bid  one  note  the 
crag-faces  and  the  monstrous  ledges  of  the  abyss 
into  which  the  spirit  was  forever  falling,  fall- 
ing. .  .  . 

Alas,  it  was  there  all  the  time,  the  sleepless  desire 
to  know  and  to  be  assured;  I  had  found  nothing, 
^70 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

learned  nothing ;  it  was  all  still  to  seek.  I  had  but 
just  drugged  the  hunger  into  repose,  beguiled  it, 
hidden  it  away  under  habits  and  work  and  activi- 
ties. It  was  something  firmer  than  work,  some- 
thing even  more  beautiful  than  beauty,  more  satis- 
fying than  love  that  I  wanted ;  and  most  certainly 
it  was  not  repose.  I  had  grown  to  loathe  the 
thought  of  that,  and  to  shrink  back  in  horror  from 
the  dumb  slumber  of  sense  and  thought.  It  was 
energy,  life,  activity,  motion,  that  I  desired;  to 
see  and  touch  and  taste  all  things,  not  only  things 
sweet  and  delightful,  but  every  passionate  impulse, 
every  fiery  sorrow  that  thrilled  and  shook  the 
spirit,  every  design  that  claimed  the  loyalty  of 
mankind.  I  grudged,  it  seemed,  even  the  slumber 
that  divided  day  from  day ;  I  wanted  to  be  up  and 
doing,  struggling,  working,  loving,  hating,  resist- 
ing, protesting.  And  even  strife  and  combat 
seemed  a  waste  of  precious  time ;  there  was  so  much 
to  do,  to  establish,  to  set  right,  to  cleanse,  to  in- 
vigorate, great  designs  to  be  planned  and  executed, 
great  glories  to  unfold.  Yet  sooner  or  later  I  was 
condemned  to  drop  the  tools  from  my  willing  hand, 
to  stand  and  survey  the  unfinished  work,  and  to 
grieve  that  I  might  no  longer  take  my  share. 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

6 

It  was  even  thus  that  the  vision  came  to  me,  in  a 
dream  of  the  night.  I  had  been  reading  the  story 
of  the  isle  of  Circe,  and  the  thunderous  curve  of 
the  rolling  verse  had  come  marching  into  the  mind 
as  the  breakers  march  into  the  bay.  I  dropped  the 
book  at  last  and  slept. 

Yes,  I  was  in  the  wood  itself;  I  could  see  little 
save  undergrowth  and  great  tree-trunks ;  here  and 
there  a  glimpse  of  sky  among  the  towering  foliage. 
The  thicket  was  less  dense  to  the  left,  I  thought, 
and  in  a  moment  I  came  out  upon  an  open  space, 
and  saw  a  young  man  in  the  garb  of  a  shepherd,  a 
looped  blue  tunic,  with  a  hat  tossed  back  upon  the 
shoulders  and  held  there  by  a  cord.  He  had 
leaned  a  metal  stave  against  a  tree,  the  top  of  it 
adorned  by  a  device  of  crossed  wings.  He  was 
stooping  down  and  disengaging  something  from  the 
earth,  so  that  when  I  drew  near,  he  had  taken  it 
up  and  was  gazing  curiously  at  it.  It  was  the 
herb  itself!  I  saw  the  prickly  flat  leaves,  the 
black  root  and  the  little  stars  of  milk-white  bloom. 
He  looked  up  at  me  with  a  smile  as  though  he  had 
expected  me,  which  showed  his  small  white  teeth 


Herh  Moly  and  Heartsease 

and  the  shapely  curl  of  his  lips;  while  his  dark 
hair  fell  in  a  cluster  over  his  brow. 

"There!"  he  said,  "take  itl  It  is  what  you 
are  in  need  of !  " 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  I  want  peace,  sure  enough !  " 
He  looked  at  me  for  a  moment,  and  then  let  the 
herb  drop  upon  the  ground. 

"  Ah  no !  "  he  said  lightly,  "  it  will  not  bring  you 
that ;  it  does  not  give  peace,  the  herb  of  patience !  " 

"  Well,  I  will  take  it,"  I  said,  stooping  down ; 
but  he  planted  his  foot  upon  it.  "  See,"  he  said, 
"  it  has  already  rooted  itself ! "  And  then  I  saw 
that  the  black  root  had  pierced  the  ground,  and 
that  the  fibers  were  insinuating  themselves  into  the 
soil.     I  clutched  at  it,  but  it  was  firm. 

"  You  do  not  want  it,  after  all,"  he  said.  "  You 
want  heartsease,  I  suppose.?  That  is  a  different 
flower  —  it  grows  upon  men's  graves." 

"  No,"  I  cried  out  petulantly,  like  a  child.  "  I 
do  not  want  heartsease !  That  is  for  those  who  are 
tired,  and  I  am  not  tired ! " 

He  smiled  at  me  and  stooped  again,  raised  the 
plant  and  gave  it  to  me.     It  had  a  fresh  sharp 
fragrance  of  the  woodland  and  blowing  winds,  but 
the  thorns  pricked  my  hands.  .  .  . 
273 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

The  dream  was  gone ;  and  I  awoke ;  lying  there, 
trjdng  to  recover  the  thing  which  I  had  seen,  I 
heard  the  first  faint  piping  of  the  birds  begin  in 
the  ivy  round  my  windows,  as  they  woke  drowsily 
and  contentedly  to  life  and  work.  The  truth 
flashed  upon  me,  in  one  of  those  sudden  lightning- 
blazes  that  seem  to  obliterate  even  thought. 

"  Yes,"  I  cried  to  myself,  "  that  is  the  secret ! 
It  is  that  life  does  not  end;  it  goes  on.  To  find 
what  I  am  in  search  of,  to  understand,  to  inter- 
pret, to  see  clearly,  to  sum  it  up,  that  would  be  an 
end,  a  soft  closing  of  the  book,  the  shutting  of  the 
door — and  that  is  just  what  I  do  not  want.  I 
want  to  live,  and  endure,  and  sufi^er,  and  experi- 
ence, and  love,  and  Twt  to  understand.  It  is  life 
continuous,  unfolding,  expanding,  developing,  with 
new  delights,  new  sorrows,  new  pains,  new  losses, 
that  I  need :  and  whether  we  know  that  we  need  it, 
or  think  we  need  something  else,  it  is  all  the  same ; 
for  we  cannot  escape  from  life,  however  reluctant 
or  sick  or  crushed  or  despairing  we  may  be.  It 
waits  for  us  until  we  have  done  groaning  and 
bleeding,  and  we  must  rise  up  again  and  live. 
Even  if  we  die,  even  if  we  seek  death  for  ourselves, 
it  is  useless.     The  eye  may  close,  the  tide  of  un- 


Herb  Moly  and  Heartsease 

consciousness  may  flow  in,  the  huddled  limbs  may 
tumble  prone;  a  moment,  and  then  life  begins 
again ;  we  have  but  flown  like  the  bird  from  one  tree 
to  another.  There  is  no  end  and  no  release;  it 
is  our  destiny  to  live ;  the  darkness  is  all  about  us, 
but  we  are  the  light,  enlacing  it  with  struggling 
beams,  piercing  it  with  fiery  spears.  The  dark- 
ness cannot  quench  it,  and  wherever  the  light  goes, 
there  it  is  light.  The  herb  Moly  is  but  the  patience 
to  endure,  whether  we  like  it  or  no.  It  delivers  us, 
not  from  ourselves,  not  from  our  pains  or  our 
delights,  but  only  from  our  fears.  They  are  the 
only  unreal  things,  because  we  are  of  the  indomi- 
table essence  of  light  and  movement,  and  we  cannot 
be  overcome  nor  extinguished  —  we  can  but  suff^er, 
we  cannot  die ;  we  leap  across  the  nether  night ;  we 
pass  resistless  on  our  way  from  star  to  star." 


^76 


BEHOLD,  THIS  DREAMER  COMETH 


XV 

BEHOLD,  THIS  DREAMER  COMETH 

IS  AW  in  one  of  the  daily  illustrated  papers  the 
other  day  a  little  picture  —  a  snapshot  from 
the  front  —  which  filled  me  with  a  curious  emo- 
tion. It  was  taken  in  some  village  behind  the  Ger- 
man lines.  A  handsome,  upright  boy  of  about 
seventeen,  holding  an  accordion  under  his  arm  — 
a  wandering  Russian  minstrel,  says  the  comment 
—  has  been  brought  before  a  fat,  elderly,  Land- 
sturm  officer  to  be  interrogated.  The  officer  tow- 
ers up,  in  a  spiked  helmet,  holding  his  sword-hilt 
in  one  hand  and  field-glasses  in  the  other,  looking 
down  at  the  boy  truculently  and  fiercely.  An- 
other officer  stands  by  smiling.  The  boy  himself 
is  gazing  up,  nervous  and  frightened,  staring  at 
his  formidable  captor,  a  peasant  beside  him,  also 
looking  agitated.  There  is  nothing  to  indicate 
what  happened,  but  I  hope  they  let  the  boy  go ! 
The  officer  seemed  to  me  to  typify  the  tyranny  of 
£79 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

human  aggressiveness,  at  its  stupidest  and  ugliest. 
The  boy,  graceful,  appealing,  harmless,  appeared, 
I  thought,  to  stand  for  the  spirit  of  beauty, 
which  wanders  about  the  world,  lost  in  its  own 
dreams,  and  liable  to  be  called  sharply  to  account 
when  it  strays  within  the  reach  of  human  aggres- 
siveness occupied  in  the  congenial  task  of  making 
havoc  of  the  world's  peaceful  labors. 

The  Landsturm  officer  in  the  picture  had  so  ob- 
viously the  best  of  it;  he  was  thoroughly  enjoying 
his  own  formidableness ;  while  the  boy  had  the 
look  of  an  innocent,  bright-eyed  creature  caught 
in  a  trap,  and  wondering  miserably  what  harm  it 
could  have  done. 

Something  of  the  same  kind  is  always  going  on 
all  the  world  over;  the  collision  of  the  barbarous 
and  disciplined  forces  of  life  with  the  beauty- 
loving,  detached  instinct  of  man.  The  latter  can- 
not give  a  reason  for  its  existence,  and  yet  I  am 
by  no  means  sure  that  it  is  not  going  to  triumph 
in  the  end. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  within  the 
last  twenty  years  the  sowing  of  education  broad- 
cast has  had  an  effect  upon  the  human  outlook, 
rather  than  perhaps  upon  the  human  character, 
280 


Beholdj  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

which  has  not  been  adequately  estimated.  The 
crop  is  growing  up  all  about  us,  and  we  hardly  yet 
know  what  it  is.  I  am  going  to  speak  of  one  out 
of  the  many  results  of  this  upon  one  particular 
section  of  the  community,  because  I  have  become 
personally  aware  of  it  in  certain  very  definite  ways. 
It  is  easy  to  generalize  about  tendencies,  but  I  am 
here  speaking  from  actual  evidence  of  an  unmis- 
takable kind. 

The  section  of  the  community  of  which  I  speak 
is  that  which  can  be  roughly  described  as  the  middle 
class  —  homes,  that  is,  which  are  removed  from  the 
urgent,  daily  pressure  of  wage-earning;  homes 
where  there  is  a  certain  security  of  outlook,  of 
varying  wealth,  with  professional  occupation  in  the 
background ;  homes  in  which  there  is  some  leisure ; 
and  some  possibility  of  stimulating,  by  reading, 
by  talk,  by  societies,  an  interest  in  ideas.  It  is  not 
a  tough,  intellectual  interest,  but  it  ends  in  a  very 
definite  desire  to  idealize  life  a  little,  to  harmonize 
it,  to  give  color  to  it,  to  speculate  about  it,  to  lift 
it  out  of  the  region  of  immediate,  practical  needs, 
to  try  experiments,  to  live  on  definite  lines,  with  a 
definite  aim  in  sight  —  that  aim  being  to  enlarge, 
to  adorn,  to  enrich  life. 

^81 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

I  am  perfectly  sure  that  this  instinct  is  greatly 
on  the  increase ;  but  the  significant  thing  about  it  is 
this,  that  whereas  formerly  religion  supplied  to  a 
great  extent  the  poetry  and  inspiration  of  life  for 
such  households,  there  is  now  a  desire  for  some- 
thing as  well  of  a  more  definitely  artistic  kind ;  to 
put  it  simply,  I  believe  that  more  people  are  in 
search  of  beauty,  in  the  largest  sense.  This  in- 
stinct does  not  run  counter  to  religion  at  all,  but 
it  is  an  impulse  not  only  towards  a  rather  grim 
and  rigid  conception  of  righteousness,  but  towards 
a  wider  appreciation  of  the  quality  of  life,  its  in- 
terest, its  grace,  its  fineness,  and  its  fullness. 

I  am  always  sorry  when  I  hear  people  talking 
about  art  as  if  it  were  a  rather  easy  and  not  very 
useful  profession,  when  as  a  matter  of  fact  art  is 
one  of  the  sharp,  swordlike  things,  like  religion  and 
patriotism,  which  run  through  life,  and  divide  it, 
and  separate  people,  and  make  men  and  women  mis- 
understand each  other.  Art  means  a  temperament, 
and  a  method,  and  a  point-of-view,  and  a  way  of 
living.  There  are  accomplished  people  who  be- 
lieve in  art  and  talk  about  it  and  even  practise  it, 
who  do  not  understand  what  it  is ;  while  there  are 
people  who  know  nothing  about  what  is  technically 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

called  art,  who  are  yet  wholly  and  entirely  artistic 
in  all  that  they  do  or  think.  Those  who  have  not 
got  the  instinct  of  art  are  wholly  incapable  of 
understanding  what  those  who  have  got  the  instinct 
are  about;  while  those  who  possess  it  recognize 
very  quickly  others  who  possess  it,  and  are  quite 
incapable  of  explaining  what  it  is  to  those  who  do 
not  understand  it. 

I  am  going  to  make  an  attempt  in  this  essay  to 
explain  what  I  believe  it  to  be,  not  because  I  hope 
to  make  it  plain  to  those  who  do  not  comprehend 
it.  They  will  only  think  this  all  a  fanciful  sort 
of  nonsense :  and  I  would  say  in  passing  that  when- 
ever in  this  world  one  comes  across  people  who 
talk  what  appears  to  be  fantastic  nonsense,  and 
who  yet  obviously  understand  each  other  and  sym- 
pathize with  each  other,  one  may  take  for  granted 
that  one  is  in  the  presence  of  one  of  the  hidden 
mysteries,  and  that  if  one  does  not  understand,  it 
is  because  one  does  not  see  or  hear  something  which 
is  perfectly  plain  to  those  who  describe  it.  It  is 
impossible  to  do  a  more  stupid  thing  than  to  ful- 
minate against  secrets  which  one  does  not  know, 
and  say  that  "  it  stands  to  reason  "  that  they  can- 
not be  true.     The  belief  that  one  has  all  the  ex- 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

perience  worth  having  is  an  almost  certain  sign 
that  one  ranks  low  in  the  scale  of  humanity ! 

But  what  I  do  hope  is  that  I  may  make  the  mat- 
ter a  little  plainer  to  people  who  do  partly  under- 
stand it,  and  would  like  to  understand  it  better; 
because  art  is  a  very  big  thing,  and  if  it  is  even 
dimly  understood,  it  can  add  much  significance  and 
happiness  to  life.  Every  one  must  recognize  the 
happiness  which  radiates  from  the  people  who  have 
a  definite  point-of-view  and  a  definite  aim.  They 
do  not  always  make  other  people  happy,  but  there 
is  never  any  doubt  about  their  own  happiness ;  and 
when  one  meets  them  and  parts  company  with  them, 
it  is  impossible  to  think  of  them  as  lapsing  into  any 
dreariness  or  depression;  they  are  obviously  going 
back  to  comfortable  schemes  and  businesses  of  their 
own ;  and  we  know  that  whenever  we  meet  them,  we 
shall  have  just  that  half-envious  feeling  that  they 
know  their  own  mind,  never  want  to  be  interested 
or  amused,  but  are  always  occupied  in  something 
that  continues  to  interest  them,  even  if  they  are  ill 
or  unfortunate. 

To  be  happy,  we  all  need  a  certain  tenacity  and 
continuity  of  aim  and  view ;  and  I  would  like  to  per- 
suade people  who  are  only  half-aware  of  it,  that 
^84 


Beholdj  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

they  have  a  power  which  they  could  use  if  they 
would,  and  which  they  would  be  happier  for  using. 
For  the  best  of  the  art  of  which  I  speak  is  that  it 
does  not  need  rare  experiences  of  expensive  ma- 
terials to  apply  it,  but  can  be  applied  to  common- 
place and  quiet  ways  of  life  just  as  easily  as  to 
exciting  and  exceptional  circumstances. 

Let  me  say  then  that  art,  as  a  method  and  a 
point-of-view,  has  not  necessarily  anything  what- 
ever to  do  with  poetry  or  painting  or  music. 
Those  are  all  manifestations  of  it  in  certain 
regions ;  but  what  it  consists  in,  to  put  it  as  simply 
as  I  can,  is  in  the  perception  and  comparison  of 
quality.  If  that  sounds  a  heavy  sort  of  formula, 
it  is  because  all  formulas  sound  dull.  But  the 
faculty  of  which  I  am  speaking  is  that  which  ob- 
serves closely  all  that  happens  or  exists  within 
range  —  the  sky,  the  earth,  the  trees,  the  fields, 
the  streets,  the  houses,  the  people ;  and  then  it  goes 
further  and  observes  not  only  what  people  look 
like,  but  how  they  move  and  speak  and  think ;  and 
then  we  come  down  to  smaller  things  still,  to  ani- 
mals and  flowers,  to  the  color  and  shape  of  things 
of  common  use,  furniture  and  tools,  everything 
which  is  used  in  ordinary  life. 
285 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

Now  every  one  of  these  things  has  a  certain 
quality  —  of  suitability  or  unsuitability,  of  pro- 
portion or  disproportion.  Let  me  take  a  few  quite 
random  instances.  Look  at  a  spade,  for  instance. 
The  sensible  man  proceeds  to  call  it  a  spade,  and 
thinks  he  has  done  all  that  is  necessary ;  the  wise 
man  considers  what  length  of  experience  and  prac- 
tice has  gone  to  make  it  perfectly  adapted  for  its 
purpose,  its  length  and  size,  the  ledge  for  the  foot 
to  rest  on,  the  hole  for  the  fingers  to  pass  through 
as  they  clasp  it;  all  the  tools  and  utensils  of  men 
are  human  documents  of  far-reaching  interest. 
Or  take  the  strange  shapes  and  colors  of  flowers, 
the  snapdragon  with  its  blunt  lips,  the  nasturtium 
with  its  round  flat  leaves  and  flaming  horns  —  they 
are  endless  in  variety,  but  all  expressing  something 
not  only  quite  definite,  but  remotely  inherited. 
Or  take  houses  —  how  perfectly  simple  and  grace- 
ful an  old  homestead  can  be,  how  frightfully  pre- 
tentious and  vulgar  the  speculative  builder's  work 
often  is,  how  full  of  beauty  both  of  form  and  color 
almost  all  the  houses  in  certain  parts  of  the  country 
are,  as  in  the  Cotswolds,  where  the  soft  stone  has 
tempted  builders  to  try  experiments,  and  to  touch 
up  a  plain  front  with  a  little  delicate  and  well- 
286 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

placed  ornament.  Or  take  the  aspect  of  men, 
women,  and  children;  how  attractive  some  cannot 
help  being,  whatever  they  do,  how  helplessly  unat- 
tractive and  uninteresting  others  can  be,  and  yet 
how,  even  so,  a  fine  and  sweet  nature  can  make 
beautiful  the  plainest  and  ungainliest  of  faces. 
And  then  in  a  further  region  still  there  are  the 
thoughts  and  habits  and  prejudices  of  people,  all 
wholly  distinct,  some  beautiful  and  desirable  and 
others  unpleasant  and  even  intolerable. 

I  could  multiply  instances  indefinitely;  but  my 
point  is  that  art  in  the  largest  sense  is  or  can  be 
concerned  with  observing  and  comparing  all  these 
separate  qualities,  wherever  they  appear.  Of 
course  every  one's  observation  does  not  extend  to 
everything.  There  are  some  people  who  are  wholly 
unobservant,  let  us  say,  of  scenery  or  houses,  who 
are  yet  very  shrewd  judges  of  character. 

It  is  not  only  the  beauty  of  things  that  one  may 
observe ;  they  may  be  dreary,  hideous,  even  horrible. 
The  interest  of  quality  does  not  by  any  means  de- 
pend upon  its  beauty.  The  point  is  whether  it  is 
strongly  and  markedly  itself.  What  could  be  more 
crammed  with  quality  than  an  enormous  old  pig, 
with  its  bristles,  its  elephantine  ears,  its  furtive 
287 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

little  eyes,  its  twitching  snout?  What  a  look  it  has 
of  a  fallen  creature,  puzzled  by  its  own  uncleanli- 
ness  and  yet  unable  to  devise  any  way  out ! 

All  this  is  only  to  show  that  life  wherever  it  is 
lived  affords  a  rich  harvest  for  eye  and  mind.  And 
if  one  dives  but  a  very  little  way  beneath  the  sur- 
face, one  is  instantly  in  the  presence  of  the  darkest 
and  deepest  of  mysteries.  Who  set  this  all  going 
and  why?  Whose  idea  is  it  all?  What  is  it  all 
driving  at?  What  is  the  meaning  of  our  being  set 
down  here,  in  our  own  particular  shape,  feeling  en- 
tirely distinct  from  it  all,  with  very  little  idea 
what  our  place  in  it  is  or  what  we  are  intended  to 
do  ?  and  above  all  that  strange  sense  that  we  cannot 
be  compelled  to  do  anything  unless  we  choose  —  a 
sense  which  remains  with  us,  even  though  day  after 
day  and  all  day  long  we  are  doing  things  that  we 
would  not  choose  to  do,  if  we  could  help  it. 

The  whole  thing  indeed  is  so  strange  as  to  be 
almost  frightening,  the  moment  that  we  dare  to 
think  at  all:  and  yet  we  feel  on  the  whole  at  our 
ease  in  it,  and  in  our  place ;  and  the  one  thing  that 
does  terrify  us  is  the  prospect  of  leaving  it. 

What  I  mean  then  by  art  in  its  largest  sense  is 
the  faculty  we  have  of  observing  and  comparing 
288 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

and  wondering ;  and  the  people  who  make  the  most 
of  life  are  the  people  who  give  their  imagination 
wings ;  and  then,  too,  comes  in  the  further  feeling, 
which  leads  us  to  try  and  shape  our  own  life  and 
conduct  on  the  lines  of  what  we  admire  and  think 
beautiful;  the  dull  word  duty  means  that,  that  we 
choose  what  is  not  necessarily  pleasant  because  for 
some  mysterious  reason  we  feel  happier  so ;  because 
however  much  we  may  pretend  to  think  otherwise, 
we  are  all  of  us  at  every  moment  intent  upon  happi- 
ness, which  is  a  very  different  thing  from  pleasure, 
and  sometimes  quite  contrary  to  it. 

And  so  we  come  at  last  to  the  art  of  living,  which 
IS  really  a  very  delicate  balancing  and  comparing 
of  reasons,  an  attempt  however  blind  and  feeble  to 
get  at  happiness ;  and  the  moment  that  this  at- 
tempt ceases  and  becomes  merely  a  dull  desire  to  be 
as  comfortable  as  we  can,  that  moment  the  spirit 
begins  to  go  down  hill,  and  the  value  of  life  is  over ; 
unless  perhaps  we  learn  that  we  cannot  afford  to  go 
down  hill,  and  that  every  backward  step  will  have 
to  be  painfully  retraced,  somewhere  or  other. 

What  then  I  would  try  to  persuade  any  one  who 
is  listening  to  me  is  that  we  must  use  our  wills 
somehow  to  try  experiments,  to  observe,  to  dis- 
^9 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

tinguish,  to  follow  what  we  think  fine  and  beautiful. 
It  may  be  said  that  this  is  only  a  sort  of  religion, 
and  indeed  it  is  exactly  that  at  which  I  am  aiming. 
It  is  a  religion,  which  is  within  the  reach  of  many 
people  who  cannot  be  touched  by  what  is  techni- 
cally called  religion.  Religion  is  a  word  that  has 
unhappily  become  specialized.  It  stands  for  be- 
liefs, doctrines,  ceremonies,  practices.  But  these 
may  not,  and  indeed  do  not,  suit  many  of  us.  The 
worst  of  definite  religions  is  that  they  are  too  defi- 
nite. They  try  to  enforce  upon  us  a  belief  in 
things  which  we  find  incredible,  or  perhaps  think  to 
be  simply  unknowable;  or  they  make  out  certain 
practices  to  be  important,  which  we  do  not  think 
important.  We  must  never  do  violence  to  our 
minds  and  souls  by  professing  to  believe  what  we 
do  not  believe,  or  to  think  things  certain  which  we 
honestly  believe  to  be  uncertain;  but  at  the  same 
time  we  must  remember  that  there  is  always  some- 
thing of  beauty  inside  every  religion,  because  re- 
ligion involves  a  deliberate  choice  of  better  motives 
and  better  actions,  and  an  attempt  to  exclude  the 
baser  and  viler  elements  of  life. 

Of  course  the  objection  to  all  this  —  and  it  is  a 
serious  one  —  is  that  people  may  say,  "  Of  course 
290 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

I  see  the  truth  of  all  that,  and  the  advantage  of 
being  actively  and  vividly  interested  in  life ;  you 
might  as  well  preach  the  advantage  of  being  happy ; 
but  my  own  interest  is  fitful  and  occasional ;  some- 
times for  days  together  I  have  no  sense  of  the  inter- 
est or  quality  of  anything.  I  have  no  time,  I  have 
no  one  to  enjoy  these  things  with.  How  am  I  to 
become  what  I  see  it  would  be  wise  to  be?  "  It  is 
as  when  the  woman  of  Samaria  said,  "  Thou  hast 
nothing  to  draw  with,  and  the  well  is  deep !  "  It  is 
true  that  civilization  does  seem  more  and  more  to 
create  men  and  women  with  these  instincts,  and  to 
set  them  in  circumstances  where  it  is  hard  to  gratify 
them.  And  then  such  people  are  apt  to  say,  "  Is 
it  after  all  worth  while  to  aim  at  so  impossible  a 
standard.''  Is  it  not  better  just  to  put  it  all  aside, 
and  make  oneself  as  comfortable  as  one  can  ? " 
And  that  is  the  practical  answer  which  a  good 
many  people  do  make  to  the  question;  and  when 
such  people  get  older,  they  are  the  most  discourag- 
ing of  all  advisers,  because  they  ridicule  the  whole 
thing  as  nonsense,  which  young  men  and  young 
women  had  better  get  out  of  their  heads  as  soon 
as  they  can;  as  Jowett  wrote  of  his  pupil  Swin- 
burne, that  he  was  a  clever  fellow,  and  would  do 
^91 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

well  enough  as  soon  as  he  had  got  rid  of  all  this 
poetry  and  nonsense.  I  feel  no  doubt  that  these 
ideas,  this  kind  of  interest  in  life,  in  the  wonder  and 
strangeness  of  it,  can  be  pursued  by  many  who  do 
not  pursue  it.  It  is  like  the  white  deer,  which  in 
the  old  stories  the  huntsman  was  forever  pursuing 
in  the  forest ;  he  did  not  ever  catch  it,  but  the  pur- 
suit of  it  brought  him  many  high  adventures. 

Of  course  it  is  far  easier  if  one  has  a  friend  who 
share  the  same  tastes ;  but  if  one  has  not,  there  are 
always  books,  in  which  the  best  minds  can  be  found 
thinking  and  talking  at  their  finest  and  liveliest. 
But  here  again  a  good  many  people  are  betrayed  by 
reading  books  as  one  may  collect  stamps,  just 
triumphing  in  the  number  and  variety  of  the 
repertory.  I  believe  very  little  in  setting  the  foot 
on  books,  as  sailors  take  possession  of  an  unknown 
isle.  One  must  make  experiments,  just  to  see  what 
are  the  kind  of  books  which  nurture  and  sustain 
one;  and  then  I  believe  in  arriving  at  a  circle  of 
books,  which  one  really  knows  through  and 
through,  and  reads  at  all  time  and  all  moods,  till 
they  get  soaked  and  enriched  with  all  sorts  of  moods 
and  associations.  I  have  a  dozen  such,  which  I 
read  and  mark  and  scribble  in,  write  when  and 
292 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

where  I  read  them,  and  who  were  my  companions. 
Of  course  the  same  books  do  not  always  last  through 
one's  course.  You  grow  out  of  books  as  you  grow 
out  of  clothes ;  and  I  sometimes  look  at  old  favorites, 
and  find  myself  lost  in  wonder  as  to  how  I  can  ever 
have  cared  for  them  like  that !  They  seem  now  like 
little  antechambers  and  corridors,  through  which  I 
have  passed  to  something  far  more  noble  and 
gracious.  But  all  the  time  we  must  be  trying  to 
weave  the  books  really  into  life,  not  let  them  stand 
like  ornaments  on  a  shelf.  It  is  poetry  that  en- 
kindles the  mind  most  to  dwell  in  the  thoughts  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking.  But  it  must  not  be 
read  straight  on ;  it  must  rather  be  tasted,  brooded 
over,  repeated,  learned  by  heart.  Let  me  take  a 
personal  instance.  As  a  boy  I  had  no  opinion  of 
Wordsworth,  except  that  I  admired  one  or  two 
of  the  great  poems  like  the  "  Ode  on  the  Intimation 
of  Immortality  "  and  the  "  Ode  to  Duty,"  which  no 
one  who  sets  out  to  love  poetry  at  all  can  afford 
to  ignore.  Then,  as  I  grew  older,  I  began  to  see 
that  quotations  from  Wordsworth  had  a  sort  of 
grandeur  in  their  very  substance,  which  was  unlike 
any  other  grandeur.  And  then  I  took  the  whole 
of  the  poems  away  for  a  vacation  and  worked  at 
^93 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

them;  and  then  I  found  how  again  and  again 
Wordsworth  touches  a  thought  to  life,  which  is 
like  the  little  objects  you  pick  up  on  the  seashore, 
the  evidence  of  another  life  close  at  hand,  in- 
dubitably there,  and  yet  unknown,  which  is  being 
lived  under  the  waste  of  waters.  When  Words- 
worth says  such  things  as 

And  many  love  me,  but  by  none 
Am  I  enough  beloved, 

or  when  he  says 

Some  silent  laws  our  hearts  may  make 
Which  they  shall  long  obey  — 

then  he  seems  to  uncover  the  very  secrets  of  the 
world,  and  to  speak  as  when  in  the  prophet's  vision 
the  seven  thunders  uttered  their  voices.  Only  to- 
day I  was  working  with  a  pupil ;  in  his  essay  he  had 
quoted  Wordsworth,  and  we  looked  up  the  place. 
While  I  was  speaking,  my  eye  fell  upon  "  The 
Poet's  Epitaph  "  and  I  saw. 

Come  hither  in  thy  hour  of  strength, 
Come,  weak  as  is  a  breaking  wave! 

Those  two  lines  of  unutterable  magic ;  he  could  not 
a94« 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

understand  why  I  stopped  and  faltered,  nor  could 
I  have  explained  it  to  him.  But  it  was  as  Cole- 
ridge says, 

Weave  a  circle  round  him  thrice, 
And  close  your  eyes  in  holy  dread. 
For  he  on  honey-dew  hath  fed, 
And  drunk  the  milk  of  paradise. 

It  is  just  a  mystery  of  beauty  that  has  been  seen, 
not  to  be  explained  or  understood. 

Of  course  there  are  people,  there  will  be  people, 
who  will  read  what  I  have  just  written  in  an  agony 
of  rationality,  and  say  that  it  is  all  rubbish.  But 
I  am  describing  an  experience  of  ecstasy  which  is 
not  very  common  perhaps ;  but  just  as  real  an  ex- 
perience as  eating  or  drinking.  I  have  had  the 
experience  before.  I  shall  have  it  again ;  I  recog- 
nize it  at  once,  and  it  is  quite  distinct  from  other 
experiences.  One  cannot  sit  down  to  it  as  regu- 
larly as  one  sits  down  to  a  meal,  of  course.  It  is 
not  a  thing  to  be  proud  of,  because  I  have  had  it 
as  far  back  as  I  can  remember.  Nor  am  I  at  all 
sure  what  the  effect  of  it  is.  It  does  not  trans- 
figure life  except  for  the  moment ;  and  if  I  were  in 
a  dull  frame  of  mind,  it  might  not  visit  me  at  all, 
295 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

though  it  is  very  apt  to  come  if  I  am  in  a  sad  or 
anxious  frame  of  mind. 

Then  how  do  I  interpret  it?  Very  simply  in- 
deed; that  there  is  a  region  which  I  will  call  the 
region  of  beauty,  to  which  the  view  of  life  that  I 
have  called  art  does  sometimes  undoubtedly  admit 
one ;  though  as  I  have  also  said  the  view  of  which 
I  speak  is  concerned  with  many  perceptions  which 
are  not  beautiful,  and  even  sometimes  quite  the 
opposite. 

If  I  were  frankly  asked  whether  it  is  worth  while 
trying  to  think  or  imagine  or  thrust  oneself  into 
this  particular  kind  of  rapture,  I  should  say, 
"  Certainly  not  1 "  It  is  very  doubtful  if  it  could 
be  genuinely  attained  unless  it  has  been  already 
experienced ;  and  I  do  not  believe  in  the  wholesome- 
ness  of  self-suggested  emotions. 

But  I  do  believe  most  firmly  that  it  is  worth  while 
for  any  one  who  is  interested  in  such  effects  at  all 
to  try  experiments,  by  looking  at  things  critically, 
hearing  things,  observing,  listening  to  other  people, 
reading  books,  trying  in  fact  to  practise  observa- 
tion and  judgment. 

I  was  visiting  some  printing  works  the  other  day. 
The  great  cylinders  were  revolving,  the  wheels 
^96 


Beholdj  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

buzzing,  the  levers  clicking.  A  boy  perched  on  a 
platform  by  the  huge  machine  lightly  disengaged 
a  sheet  of  paper;  it  was  drawn  in,  and  a  moment 
after  a  thing  like  a  gridiron  flew  up,  made  a  sort 
of  bow,  and  deposited  a  printed  sheet  in  a  box,  the 
sides  of  which  kept  moving,  so  as  to  pat  the  papers 
into  one  solid  pad. 

I  came  away  with  the  master-printer,  and  asked 
him  idly  whether  the  boy  knew  what  book  he  was 
printing.  He  laughed.  "  No,"  he  said,  "  and  the 
less  he  is  interested  the  better  —  his  business  is  just 
to  feed  the  machine,  and  it  becomes  entirely  me- 
chanical." I  felt  a  kind  of  shame  at  the  thought 
of  a  human  being  becoming  so  entirely  and  com- 
pletely a  machine ;  but  the  boy  looked  cheerful,  well 
and  intelligent,  and  as  if  he  had  a  very  decisive 
little  life  of  his  own  quite  apart  from  the  whizzing 
engine,  forever  bowing  over  and  putting  a  new  sheet 
in  the  box. 

But  it  is  just  that  dull  and  mechanical  handling 
of  life  which  I  believe  we  ought  to  avoid.  It  is 
harder  to  avoid  it  for  some  people  than  for  others, 
and  it  is  more  difficult  to  escape  from  under  certain 
conditions.  But  all  art  and  all  artistic  perception 
is  just  a  sign  of  the  irresponsible  and  irrepressible 
297 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

joy  of  life,  and  an  attempt,  as  I  said  at  first,  to 
perceive  and  distinguish  and  compare  the  quality 
of  things.  What  I  am  here  maintaining  is  that 
art  is  not  necessarily  the  production  of  something 
artistic;  that  is  the  same  impulse  only  when 
it  rises  in  the  heart  of  an  inventive,  accomplished, 
deft-fingered,  eager-minded  craftsman.  If  a  man 
or  a  woman  has  a  special  gift  of  words,  or  a 
mastery  of  form  and  color,  or  musical  phrases,  the 
passion  for  beauty  is  bound  to  show  itself  in  the 
making  of  beautiful  things  —  and  such  lives  are 
among  the  happiest  that  a  man  can  live,  though 
there  is  always  the  shadow  of  realizing  the  beauty 
that  is  out  of  reach,  that  cannot  be  captured  or 
expressed.  And  if  it  could  be  captured  and  ex- 
pressed, the  quest  would  vanish ! 

But  there  are  innumerable  hearts  and  minds 
which  have  the  perception  of  quality,  though  not 
the  power  of  expressing  it ;  and  these  are  the  people 
whom  I  wish  to  persuade  of  the  fact  that  they  hold 
in  their  hands  a  thread,  which,  like  the  clue  in  the 
old  story,  can  conduct  a  searcher  safely  through 
the  dark  recesses  of  the  great  labyrinth.  He  tied 
it,  the  dauntless  youth  in  the  tale,  to  the  ancient 
thorn-tree  that  grew  by  the  cavern's  mouth;  and 
298 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

then  he  stepped  boldly  in,  and  let  it  unwind  within 
his  hand. 

For  many  people,  indeed  for  all  people  who  have 
any  part  in  the  future  of  the  world,  the  clue  of  life 
must  be  found  in  beauty  of  some  kind  or  another ; 
not  necessarily  in  the  outward  beauties  of  colors, 
sounds,  and  words,  but  in  the  beauty  of  conduct, 
in  the  kind,  sweet-tempered,  pure,  unselfish  life. 
Those  who  choose  such  qualities  do  so  simply  be- 
cause they  seem  more  beautiful  than  the  spiteful, 
angry,  greedy,  selfish  life.  There  is  a  horror  of 
ugliness  about  that ;  and  thus  beauty  of  every  kind 
is  of  the  nature  of  a  signal  to  us  from  some  mighty 
power  behind  and  in  the  world.  Evil,  ugly,  hate- 
ful, base  things  are  strong  indeed;  but  no  peace, 
no  happiness,  lies  in  that  direction.  It  is  just  that 
power  of  distinguishing,  of  choosing,  of  worship- 
ing the  beautiful  quality,  which  has  done  for  the 
world  all  that  has  ever  been  done  to  improve  it; 
and  to  follow  it  is  to  take  the  side  of  the  power, 
whatever  it  may  be,  that  is  trying  to  help  and  guide 
the  world  out  of  confusion  and  darkness  and  strife 
into  light  and  peace.  It  may  be  gratefully  ad- 
mitted, of  course,  that  religion  is  one  of  the  fore- 
most influences  in  this  great  movement ;  but  it  also 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

needs  to  be  said  that  religion,  by  connecting  itself 
so  definitely  as  it  does  with  ecclesiastical  life,  and 
ceremony,  and  theological  doctrine,  has  become  a 
specialized  thing,  and  does  not  meet  all  the  desires 
of  the  heart.  It  is  not  every  one  who  finds  full 
satisfaction  for  all  the  visions  of  the  mind  and  soul 
in  a  church  organization.  Some  people,  and  those 
neither  wicked  nor  heartless  nor  unsympathetic, 
find  a  real  dreariness  in  systematized  religion,  with 
its  conventional  beliefs,  its  narrow  instruction,  its 
catechizings,  missionary  meetings,  gatherings,  de- 
votions, services.  It  may  be  all  true  enough  in  a 
sense,  but  it  often  leaves  the  sense  of  beauty  and 
interest  and  emotion  and  poetry  unfed ;  it  does  not 
represent  the  fullness  of  life.  The  people  who  are 
dissatisfied  with  it  all  are  often  dumbly  ashamed  of 
their  dissatisfaction;  but  yet  it  does  not  feed  the 
heart;  the  kind  of  heaven  that  they  are  taught 
awaits  them  is  not  a  place  that  they  recognize  as 
beautiful  or  desirable.  They  do  not  want  to  do 
wrong,  or  to  rebel  against  morality  at  all,  but 
they  have  impulses  which  do  not  seem  to  be  recog- 
nized by  technical  religion,  adventure,  friendship, 
passion,  beauty,  the  strange  and  wonderful  emo- 
tions of  life.  The  work  of  great  poets  and  artists 
300 


Behold,  This  Dreamer  Cometh 

and  musicians,  the  lovely  scenes  of  earth,  these  seem 
to  have  no  place  inside  systematic  religion,  to  be 
things  rather  timorously  permitted,  excused,  and 
apologized  for.  Men  need  something  richer,  freer, 
and  larger.  They  do  not  want  to  shirk  their  duty 
or  to  follow  evil;  but  many  things  seem  to  be  in- 
sisted upon  by  religion  as  important  which  seem 
unimportant,  many  beliefs  spoken  of  as  true  which 
seem  at  best  uncertain.  It  is  not  that  such  people 
are  disloyal  to  God  and  to  virtue,  but  they  feel 
stifled  and  confined  in  an  atmosphere  which  dares 
not  attribute  to  God  many  of  the  finest  and  sweet' 
est  things  in  the  world. 

Such  a  feeling  is  not  so  much  a  rebellion  against 
old  ideas,  as  a  new  wine  which  is  too  strong  for  the 
old  bottles;  it  is  a  desire  to  extend  the  range  of 
ideals,  to  find  more  things  divine. 

I  do  not  believe  that  this  instinct  is  going  to  be 
crushed  or  overcome;  I  believe  it  will  grow  and 
spread,  and  play  an  immense  part  in  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  future.  I  hope  indeed  that  religion  will 
open  its  arms  to  meet  it,  because  the  spirit  of  which 
I  speak  is  in  the  truest  sense  religious ;  since  it  is 
concerned  with  purifying  and  enriching  life,  and 
in  living  life,  not  on  base  or  mean  lines,  but  with 
301 


Escape  and  Other  Essays 

constant  reference  to  the  message  of  a  Power  which 
is  forever  reminding  us  that  life  is  full  of  fire  and 
music,  great,  free  and  wonderful.  That  is  the 
meaning  of  it  all,  an  increased  sense  of  the  large- 
ness and  richness  of  life,  which  refuses  to  be  bound 
inside  a  gloomy,  sad,  suspicious  outlook.  It  is  all 
an  attempt  to  trust  God  more  rather  than  less,  and 
to  recognize  the  worth  of  life  in  wider  and  wider 
circles. 

''  Behold  this  dreamer  cometh,"  said  Joseph's 
envious  brethren,  when  they  saw  him  afar  off ;  "  we 
shall  see  what  will  become  of  his  dreams  !  "  They 
conspired  to  slay  him,  they  sold  him  into  slavery. 
Yet  the  day  was  to  come  when  they  stood  trembling 
before  him,  and  when  he  freely  forgave  them  and 
royally  entertained  them.  We  can  never  afford  to 
despise  or  deride  dreams,  because  they  are  what  men 
live  by ;  they  come  true,  they  bring  a  great  deliver- 
ance with  them. 


THE    END 


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BERKELEY 


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